Losso ‡ de Setton

Enrique Pichon Rivière was a pioneering Argentinian psychoanalyst, writing in Spanish in the
middle of the twentieth century. His work has inspired not only succeeding generations of Latin
American analysts, but also spawned the fields of analytic family therapy, dynamic group
THE LINKED SELF

‡ Scharff
work and organizational consultation. This book presents Pichon Rivière’s groundbreaking
work in English for the first time. IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
‘Pichon Rivière’s important work is finally available to the English-speaking reader. It is,
together with the work of Klein, Fairbairn, and Winnicott, a fundamental contribution to The Pioneering Work of
contemporary psychoanalytic object relations theory. Pichon Rivière’s original concept of
“link” explains the relational linkages between self and object representations, and expands Enrique Pichon Riviere
the concept of the link to the description of unconscious intrapsychic group formations. The
present collection of his writings describes the relation between these intrapsychic group
structures and the individual’s unconscious relations to the concentric cycles of family and
social dynamics, and provides an integrating frame for the psychoanalytic exploration of

THE LINKED SELF IN PSYCHOANALYSIS

groups and social organizations. The complementary chapters by distinguished contemporary
authors influenced by Pichon Rivière included in this volume make for an actualized,
stimulating overview of this important theoretician.’
—Otto Kernberg, past president of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA)

‘It is indeed fortunate that Roberto Losso, Lea S. de Setton, and David E. Scharff have
undertaken this project of illuminating the original psychoanalytical productions of Pichon
Rivière and of displaying his clinical and theoretical proposals to English-speaking
psychoanalysts. At a time when psychoanalysis was focused on the internal world, Pichon
Rivière proposed a social psychology for psychoanalysis, emphasizing the necessary links
between internal and external worlds. Pichon Rivière’s original and multi-causal line of thought
is demonstrated both by his own writing and by the contemporary commentaries gathered
brilliantly by the editors in this important volume.’
—Leticia Glocer Fiorini, MD, past president of the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association and
former Chair of the Publications Committee of the IPA

ROBERTO LOSSO, MD, is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst of the Argentine Psychoanalytic

Association and the IPA. He is Consulting Professor, School of Medicine, University of Buenos
Aires.
LEA S. DE SETTON, PhD, is a member of the IPA and is a psychologist, psychoanalyst,
Edited by
and psychotherapist in private practice with individuals, couples, and families in Panama.
DAVID E. SCHARFF, MD, is co-founder and former director of the International Roberto Losso, Lea S. de Setton,
Psychotherapy Institute, Washington, DC; a supervising analyst at the International Institute
for Psychoanalytic Training; and chair of the IPA’s Working Group on Family and Couple
and David E. Scharff
Psychoanalysis.

Cover image courtesy of the authors New International Library of Group Analysis
ISBN 978-1-7822047-6-3
Routledge

www.routledge.com 9 781782 204763

THE LINKED SELF IN
PSYCHOANALYSIS
THE LINKED SELF IN
PSYCHOANALYSIS
The Pioneering Work of
Enrique Pichon Rivière

edited by

Roberto Losso, Lea S. de Setton

and David E. Scharff
First published 2017 by Karnac Books Ltd.

Published 2018 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright © 2017 to Roberto Losso, Lea S. de Setton, and David E. Scharff

The rights of the contributors to be identified as the authors of this work

have been asserted in accordance with §§77 and 78 of the Copyright Design
and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced

or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.

Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to
infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A C.I.P. for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781782204763 (pbk)

Translated by Judith Filc, Susan Rogers, and Lea Setton.

Edited, designed and produced by The Studio Publishing Services Ltd

www.publishingservicesuk.co.uk
email: studio@publishingservicesuk.co.uk
CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND PERMISSIONS ix

ABOUT THE EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS xiii

SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD xvii

PREFACE by Virginia Ungar xxi

INTRODUCTION: Enrique Pichon Rivière: his life and work xxv

Roberto Losso, Lea S. de Setton, and David E. Scharff

PART I
PICHON RIVIÈRE’S WRITINGS

CHAPTER ONE
New problems facing psychiatry 3

CHAPTER TWO
Neurosis and psychosis: a theory of illness 23

CHAPTER THREE
Some observations on the transference in psychotic patients 35

v
vi CONTENTS

CHAPTER FOUR
Operative group technique 45
In collaboration with J. Bleger, D. Liberman, and E. Rolla

CHAPTER FIVE
Family groups: an operative approach 59

CHAPTER SIX
The treatment of family groups: collective psychotherapy 69

CHAPTER SEVEN
The theory of the link 77

CHAPTER EIGHT
The uncanny (sinister) in the life and work 111
of the Count of Lautréamont

CHAPTER NINE
Some essays concerning everyday life 139
With Ana Pampliega de Quiroga

PART II
ESSAYS ON PICHON RIVIÈRE’S
THEORY AND CLINICAL PRACTICE

CHAPTER TEN
Enrique Pichon Rivière: a brilliant trailblazer 149
Roberto Losso

CHAPTER ELEVEN
Effects of the transmission of Enrique Pichon Rivière’s ideas 159
Rosa Jaitin

CHAPTER TWELVE
Meeting Pichon Rivière 167
René Kaës

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Pichon Rivière’s theory 183
An interview with Ana Quiroga
Rosa Marcone
 CONTENTS vii

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The legacy of Pichon Rivière 197
Alberto Eiguer

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The long river of Enrique Pichon Rivière 211
Vicente Zito Lema

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Pichon Rivière and object relations theory 217
David E. Scharff

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
A glossary of Pichon Rivière’s concepts 233
Roberto Losso and Lea Setton

NOTES 247

REFERENCES 257

INDEX 267
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND PERMISSIONS

The Spanish texts for this volume were translated by Judith Filc, Susan
Rogers, Lea Setton, and Roberto Losso. The editors offer their grati-
tude for this work.

Permissions
Pichon Rivière’s writings first appeared in the following publications.
They are reprinted here in translation with permission.
New problems facing psychiatry [Una nueva problemática para
la psiquiatría]. In: Del psicoanálisis a la psicología social (Volume I)
(pp. 433–455). Buenos Aires: Ediciones Galerna, 1971. Revista de
Psicoanálisis, XXXV, 1978, 4: 659–673.
Neurosis and psychosis: a theory of illness [Neurosis y psicosis: una
teoría de la enfermedad]. Revista de Psicoanálisis, LIX, 2002: 873–882.
Some observations on the transference in psychotic patients [Algunas
observaciones sobre la transferencia en los pacientes psicóticos]. In:
Del Psicoanálisis a la Psicología Social (Volume II). Buenos Aires.
Ediciones Galerna, 1971, pp. 267–298.

ix
x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND PERMISSIONS

Operative group technique: Técnica de los Grupos Operativos (En

colaboración con los doctores José Bleger, David Liberman, &
Edgardo Rolla). In: Del Psicoanálisis a la Psicología Social (Volume II)
(pp. 269–275). Buenos Aires, Ediciones Galerna, 1971. Acta
Neuropsiquiátrica Argentina, 1960, 6.
Family groups: an operative approach [Grupos familiares. Un enfoque
Operativo]. In: Del Psicoanálisis a la Psicología Social (Volume II) (pp.
202–213). Buenos Aires: Ediciones Galerna, 1971.
The treatment of family groups: collective psychotherapy [Trata-
miento de Grupos Familiares. Psicoterapia Colectiva]. In: Del Psico-
análisis a la Psicología Social (Volume II) (pp. 189–199). Buenos Aires:
Ediciones Galerna, 1971.
Theory of the Link (1979). Teoría del Vínculo [Link Theory]. Buenos
Aires, Nueva Visión.
The uncanny (or sinister) in the life and work of the Count of Lautréa-
mont [Lo siniestro en la vida y en la obra del Conde de Lautréamont].
In: Del Psicoanálisis a la Psicología Social (Volume II) (pp. 129-168).
Buenos Aires: Ediciones Galerna, 1971.
Some essays concerning everyday life (with Ana Pampliega de
Quiroga) [Fragmentos del curso dado]. En el Instituto Francés de
Estudios Superiores, 1946. Revista de Psicoanálisis, 1947, 10(4). Enrique
Pichon Rivière and Ana Pampliega de Quiroga (1970). Psychology of
Everyday Life [Psicología de la vida cotidiana]. Buenos Aires: Galerna.
Our thanks to the following for authorising publication of works prin-
ted in this volume:
Enrique Pichon Rivière, Jr., Joaquín Pichon Rivière, and Marcelo
Pichon Rivière have authorized the publication of articles by their
father.
The Journal of Psychoanalysis (Psychoanalytic Association Argentina)
has authorized the publication of articles published in this volume.
René Kaës has authorized the translation and publication of his
preface to the French edition of the Social Psychology of Psychoanalysis.
Alberto Eiguer, Rosa Jaitin, and Vicente Zito Lema, who have agreed
to communicate their experiences with Pichon Rivière.
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND PERMISSIONS xi

Chapters Seven and Sixteen were published by the International

Journal of Psycho-Analysis prior to the publication of this volume and
appear here by permission of the journal.
Ana Quiroga, who has authorized us to publish an interview referring
to their experience of her close relationship with Pichon Rivière.
Lea Setton wishes to thank Max Hernandez for his tutelage concern-
ing Pichon Rivière’s work.
We also thank Oliver Rathbone at Karnac Books for appreciating the
importance of bringing Pichon Rivière’s work to an English-speaking
audience. We also thank The Studio Ltd for their work in editing the
text and producing the book.
ABOUT THE EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS

Alberto Eiguer, MD, is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst (SPP,

APdeBA-IPA) in Paris and the former President of the International
Association of Couple and Family Psychoanalysis. He is Research
Director, of the laboratory PCPP, Institute of Psychology, University
René Descartes, Sorbonne, Paris, and director of the review Le Divan
Familial (The Family Couch). He has published many books, including
recently Le Tiers: Psychanalyse de l’intersubjectivité (The Third: Psycho-
analysis of Inter-subjectivity) (Paris, 2013).

Rosa Jaitin is Research Director, Descartes University, Paris,

International Association of Couple and Family Psychoanalysis,
Scientific Director, President, International Association of Link
Psychoanalysis, Board Member, Federation of Analytical Group
Psychotherapy, and a family, couple, and group psychoanalyst. She is
a member of the Société Française de Thérapie Familiale Psychana-
lytique, Société Française de Psychothérapie Psychanalytique de
Groupe. She has had books published in both French and Spanish.

René Kaës is a psychoanalyst and group analyst, as well as a

psychodramatist. He is the former President of the French Circle

xiii
xiv ABOUT THE EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS

for Training and Research: psychoanalytical approaches to group,

psychodrama, and institutions, and Professor Emeritus of Psychology
and Clinical Psychopathology, University of Lyon. He has authored
several books on psychoanalysis and groups, including (in English)
Linking, Alliances, and Shared Space (2007).

Vicente Zito Lema is a poet, playwright, journalist, philosopher, and

teacher in Argentina. He is a disciple of Enrique Pichon Rivière and
currently works as a professor of art and writing therapy in the Cul-
tural Center, La Puerta, Argentina.

Roberto Losso, MD, is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst of the

Argentine Psychoanalytical Association and the International Psycho-
analytical Association. He is Consulting Professor, Faculty of Medi-
cine, University of Buenos Aires. Coordinating Committee, Family
and Couple FEPAL (Latin American Psychoanalytic Federation),
Clinical Professor of Family and Couple Therapy, John F. Kennedy
University, and a Board Member, International Association of Family
and Couple Psychoanalysis. His publications include: Family Psycho
analysis. Theoretical and Technical Considerations (Buenos Aires, Lumen)
(Italian version: Psicoanalisi della famiglia. Percorsi theoretical-tecnici
(Milano, Franco Angeli), and several texts on his personal experience
with Pichon Rivière.

Rosa Marcone is a professor of philosophy and Director of the

Program of Careers in Social Psychology, specialiszing in groups,
institutions and community, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina,
First Private School of Social Psychology. Faculty of Psychology,
University of Tucuman.

Ana P. de Quiroga is a social psychologist and Director of the School of

Social Psychology founded by Enrique Pichon Rivière, Buenos Aires,
Argentina. She is a teacher and member of the Scientific Committee of
the Masters of Mental Health and Masters of Social Work, National
University of Entre Ríos, and University of Southern Patagonia, and a
teacher and supervisor to the Masters of Social Psychology program,
School of Psychology, National University of Tucuman.
 ABOUT THE EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS xv

David E. Scharff, MD, is chair of the board, co-founder and former

director of the International Psychotherapy Institute, Washington, DC,
a supervising analyst, International Institute for Psychoanalytic
Training, and chair of the International Psychoanalytical Association’s
Committee on Family and Couple Psychoanalysis. He is the former
Vice-President, International Association for Couple and Family
Psychoanalysis, and the author and editor of many books and articles,
including recently The Interpersonal Unconscious (with Jill Scharff) and
Psychoanalysis in China (with Sverre Varvin).

Lea S. de Setton, PhD, is a member and training analyst of the

International Psychoanalytical Association and of the faculty, of the
International Psychotherapy Institute and International Institute for
Psychoanalytic Training, Washington, DC. She is the former chair
of IPI-Panama, a faculty member of the Doctorate Program, Catholic
University (USMA), Panama, and a board member of the International
Association for Family and Couple Psychoanalysis. She is a psychol-
ogist, psychoanalyst, and psychotherapist in private practice with
individuals, couples, and families in Panama.

Virgina Ungar is a supervising and training analyst, Buenos Aires

Psychoanalytical Association, and President-Elect of the International
Psychoanalytical Association.
SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD

Enrique Pichon Rivière:

A Pioneer of the Link

On behalf of our colleagues, students and patients alike, I am very

grateful to Roberto Losso, Lea S. de Setton, and David Scharff, the
editors of this volume about the life and work of Enrique Pichon
Rivière for bringing it to the New International Library of Group
Analysis. With a Preface by Virginia Ungar, this volume includes
translations into English of his most important contributions to
psychoanalysis and its applications to the related disciplines of family
therapy and group analysis. It also includes a collection of excellent
elaborations and critiques of some of his main themes and preoccu-
pations. Special care has been taken to ensure the quality of the trans-
lation from the Spanish, recognizing the subtle nuances of many
concepts in our discipline.
For several decades, those of us who live and work north of the
Equator or more precisely who are not fluent in Spanish, have had
only the echoes and ripples of the ideas of Pichon Rivière, although
actually he was one of the founders of the study of the social uncon-
scious in persons and their groupings, in terms of both general theory
and clinical practice. Although anticipated in the 1920s,the “field
theory” of the social unconscious was conceived during the 1930s, not
only in Europe and in Germany in particular, but also in Argentina!

xvii
xviii SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD

The context of this innovation was a continuing dialogue with Freud

concerning the need to go beyond the species based notion of the
collective unconscious proposed by Jung, and perhaps the esoteric
notion of the social unconscious proposed by Burrow and by the early
Fromm. This field theory was influenced by the new paradigm of
quantum mechanics that privileged the “waves” of Niels Bohr over
the “particles” of Albert Einstein, or in other words the non-contin-
gent aetiological processes of the field as-a-whole over the localization
of classical physics. However, this innovation was also influenced by
the dynamics of immigration from many societies, which was associ-
ated with the aftermath of various kinds of social trauma. In our disci-
pline the so-called “field” was circumscribed by the sociality of
human nature and socialisation through language, emphasizing rela-
tionality, trans-personality, trans-generationality, and collectivity.
In other words, both as a product of intellectual diffusion and
spontaneous formation, the work of Pichon Rivière resonated in many
ways with that of psychoanalysts such as Horney in Germany, Foulkes
and Bion in England, and Anzieu in France. Some of these ideas have
been developed by self-psychologists, object relations thinkers, and
relational revisionists, especially in the United States. It is also impor-
tant to acknowledge the work of the Lacanians who have emphasized
the functions of symbolic communication, and in particular the work
of the younger colleagues of Foulkes, such as de Maré and Pines, who
established the principles of group analysis.
This very complex chain of ideas is characterized by multiple
origins and the continuous melding of several schools of thought in
several countries and in several languages. Central to the develop-
ment of this truly relational psychoanalysis and group analysis is a
concept of the self that is linked to other people and to external objects
generally. However, a “linked” self who becomes linked during matu-
ration is not quite the same as a self who originates in linkage. The
original self is not the source of the external world to which it becomes
linked through engagement with it. In original linkages the societal
ego is as primary as the body ego, and introjection is as primary as
projection (Hopper, 2003a). In the group analytic field theory of the
social unconscious, the assumption of the social brain and the
assumption of an infant who seeks attachment are not as powerful as
the assumptions of the reality of social facts and the possibilities of
socio-genesis. Transpersonality trumps relationality, which, in turn,
 SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD xix

trumps interaction; the triad precedes the dyad, which, in turn,

precedes the monad; and language precedes the phrase, which, in
turn, precedes the word. After all, King Lear is born through linkages
and dies through the dissolution of them, both within himself and
between himself and others, including those of the State itself. The
study of the tripartite matrix, with its component foundational,
dynamic and personal foci, is not only multi-variate, but also involves
complex philosophical and political assumptions, many of which
remain unconscious (Hopper & Weinberg, 2011, 2016, 2017).
That said, as a psychoanalyst and group analyst, I wonder why
colleagues from Mediterranean countries have become more familiar
with the work of Pichon Rivière than with the work of Foulkes. Surely,
this is not only a matter of language, because group analysis is also
difficult for American group psychotherapists. Is it easier to under-
stand the inter-personality of the linked self than it is to comprehend
the dynamics of trans-personality, trans-generationality, and collectiv-
ity? Is the linked self and the interpersonal unconscious closer to the
biology of the original ego of adaptation than to the sociality of the
ego of agency? Perhaps such abstract questions are easier to ask in
English than in the romance languages.
I am confident that this book will stimulate new dialogue among
psychoanalysts and group analysts. I anticipate many panels and
workshops devoted to the further elaboration of the ideas put forward
in it. It is good to honor the full pantheon of our founders.

Earl Hopper
Series Editor
PREFACE

A true master

The publication of this book rightly deserves to be celebrated. The

opportunity to give an English-speaking audience access to a polished
selection of Enrique Pichon Rivière’s most important articles is one to
be seized. What we have, in fact, is a volume that combines a series of
key articles from one of the pioneers of psychoanalysis in Argentina,
together with the creative output of his followers. In the collection
brought together here for this book, there is to be found the essence
of those who truly deserve to be called pioneer.
The María Moliner Dictionary of Spanish Usage (Moliner, 1987)
defines the word “pioneer” as being derived from the French péonier,
which means foot soldier, a “person who goes ahead of the group to
explore or colonize a country or to initiate an activity, preparing the
way for those who will follow later.”
If we look at the wide range of interests that Pichon Rivière
enjoyed, together with the developments created by his colleagues
and disciples, the word “pioneer” seems quite fitting with respect to
him as he managed to transmit above all his passion for psychoana-
lysis and for everyday practice in work with the most perturbed
patients.

xxi
xxii PREFACE

One of his many disciples, the Argentine psychoanalyst resident in

Paris Salomón Resnik, conveys this very eloquently in an article on his
master:

Thanks to him, I came to understand that a true master is not he who

teaches, but he who stimulates or awakens learning. One of his core
principles was not to teach, but more precisely to provoke or “invoke”
a feeling of curiosity and amazement for learning. (Resnik, 2001,
p. 172, translated for this edition)

I share with Resnik the fact of being a child analyst. He studied

under and supervised with Pichon Rivière and also with the latter’s
wife, Arminda Aberastury, a child analysis pioneer, whose influence
on psychoanalysis and on other fields such as pediatrics and educa-
tion transcended the borders of Argentina.
Aberastury was born in Buenos Aires in 1910 and died there in
1971. She belonged to an aristocratic family, and the Argentine upper
class did not approve of their young daughters becoming physicians.
Since there was no degree in psychology at the time, she studied peda-
gogy. In 1933, she met Enrique Pichon Rivière, and married him four
years later.
I spoke about the pioneer as one who opens new paths, and the
figure of Aberastury takes on that mantle in the following anecdote
that is part of the history of the early stages of psychoanalysis in
Argentina. Aberastury worked with her husband at the Hospicio de
las Mercedes, a psychiatric facility. One of Pichon Rivière’s patients
came with her daughter and left her in the waiting room. The girl,
who was eight years old, had been declared oligophrenic, but Aber-
astury perceived in her a look that was simultaneously smart and
anguished. She decided to treat the girl with a pedagogical approach,
switching later to an analytic one based on Anna Freud’s book, Psycho-
analysis of Children (Freud, A., 1927). According to the story, the girl
experienced normal development and went on to become a teacher.
If we now turn back to the path of convergence between psychi-
atric practice and psychoanalysis we will understand the importance
of Pichon Rivière’s contributions in both psychopathology and tech-
nique.
His proposal of a core depressive illness, or a unique psychosis,
following on the German psychiatrist W. Giesinger, also has its
metapsychological basis in the regressive mechanism as it refers to the
 PREFACE xxiii

notion of the latent psychotic nucleus that a traumatic or depressive

situation could trigger. In this sense, the coming together of the psy-
chiatric and psychoanalytic visions can be seen to be of great benefit.
His restless spirit led Pichon Rivière to use group technique in the
treatment of psychotic adolescents and also to establish a private
clinic, not being able to find a suitable space in public institutions.
This clinic—informally called “the Little Menninger”—was a space
for clinical practice and instruction and learning for a generation of
psychoanalysts, many of whom became internationally renowned,
including, as it did, José Bleger, David Liberman, Willy and Madeleine
Baranger, and Horacio Etchegoyen, to name but a few.
It was in this very clinic that Pichon Rivière set out and consoli-
dated the basis for core theories, such as the concept of the internal
group as a psychic configuration, this opening the path to under-
standing the essence of the human structure as being link-based. It
was there also that the way was forged for what was later to be called
the School of Social Psychology.
As can be seen, the spectrum of interests enjoyed by Pichon Rivière
was exceptionally wide, as was the influence that he exerted on the
professional development of his disciples and it is here, as we said,
that the essence of the true master is to be found: it is that which trans-
mits passion for the clinical task at hand and invites us to find our
own path, daring to create therapeutic devices when those which we
have available turn out to be in some way insufficient.

Virginia Ungar, MD
INTRODUCTION

Enrique Pichon Rivière:

his life and work

Roberto Losso, Lea S. de Setton, and

David E. Scharff

The importance of Enrique Pichon Rivière

Enrique Pichon Rivière was a unique personality. As one of the
founders of the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association, his foundations
in classical and dynamic psychiatry, psychoanalysis, group psycho-
therapy, the family, the couple, social psychology, and applied psycho-
analysis led to thinking that was beyond his time and to innovations
that presaged many developments of current analytic thinking.
However, because he wrote little, and because what he did write was
not translated into English, he has been given little credit for devel-
oping some of the central ideas that have characterized psychoanaly-
sis for the past twenty years.
Pichon Rivière’s most important contribution is the theory of the
link—vínculo in Spanish. He described the link as a complex structure
that includes the subject, the object, and their mutual interaction,
through processes of communication and learning in an intersubjec-
tive frame. The link is both conscious and unconscious, mental and
interactional, and it has a central temporal dimension in that it links
the generations. It has two axes, the vertical link to past and future
generations, and the horizontal link to family members and the wider
social community.

xxv
xxvi INTRODUCTION

We note right at the beginning of this volume that the translation

of the word “vínculo” could equally be “bond”. However, by now
there has been established a tradition in those writers who have taken
ideas of vínculo from Pichon Rivière that has used the word “link”
and, in discussion with the translators, we have elected to continue to
use “link.” However, the shades of meaning that have to do with the
word bond are also appropriate to consider in understanding the
nuances of Pichon Rivière’s contribution.
As early as the 1960s, Pichon Rivière said, “There is no psychic
experience outside of the link with others” (Losso, 2001). Pichon
Rivière emphasized that patients had to be considered within the
frame of their family and the social context. He centered his position
in the importance of intersubjectivity in the analytic session. He
described the patient-analyst situation as “bi-corporeal” and “tri-
personal”, meaning that there is always a third presence in the rela-
tionship. There are not only two subjects in a link. Every link is
triangular. In the mother–baby dyad, a “third” functions permanently
in the mother´s mind, creating a triangular (oedipal) situation from
the beginning. For Pichon Rivière, the motivational center of the link
is constituted by the subject’s needs and the fact that human beings
cannot survive outside of links with others. There is nothing in the
subject that is not the result of the interaction between individuals and
groups, which is not to deny that an equal component of the self is
constituted from within.
Pichon Rivière’s thinking was multidisciplinary and interdiscipli-
nary. He was widely read and well informed about many fields
outside of psychoanalysis, so he complemented psychoanalytic
research with his orientation towards institutions, and drew liberally
from socio-dynamic thought. Analytically, he was profoundly influ-
enced by Melanie Klein´s ideas, which he modified substantially. With
Fairbairn, Pichon Rivière considered the individual to be a result, not
so much of raw instincts as of internalized object relations between
ego and object, but these internal organizations derived from and
were in life-long mutual influence with external interaction between
the person and external objects. He considered the totality of the
person in three areas of expression of behavior: mind, body and the
external world. Like Fairbairn, Pichon considered that the most
important element of analysis to be the analyst´s relationship with the
patient. Since the analyst is a vital contributor to the link through what
 INTRODUCTION xxvii

he says and how he handles interactions, Pichon Rivière emphasized

the importance of the analyst´s own treatment for analyzing his
fantasies and personal areas of difficulty so as to free his counter-
transference for work with the patient’s various roles.
Pichon Rivière was one of the first psychoanalysts to demonstrate
the transformations between intrapsychic and interpsychic life,
making him an important influence on contemporary relational theo-
ries in Latin America. Because he was not known in the English-
language literature, it is not recognized that he was the first to
describe therapeutic process as a deepening spiral consisting of three
elements:

1. That which exists—what appears in the field at the beginning.

2. That which is interpreted—the element the analyst introduces that
disturbs the existing organization.
3. That which is emergent—new aspects of organization that emerge
following interpretation.

This process involves a dialectic situation established with the

analyst in the here-and-now. He put it: as it was also before with
others and as it will be later be somewhere else in a different way
(Losso, 2001). Thus, the center of the analytic link is “here-and-now-
with-me”, a formulation that allows focus on the immediacy of the
analytic encounter, the importance of the analytic relationship, and
the temporal element of the link that binds the past and future.
Psychoanalytic work, of course, facilitates modifications in internal
structure and thought, but Pichon Rivière held that most modification
of structure comes after the patient terminates analysis.
Pichon Rivière has been extremely influential in the development
of psychoanalysis in Latin America, and in those of his students who
emigrated—such as Haydee Faimberg, Rosa Jaitin, and Alberto
Eiguer, and in some currently influential theorists who read Spanish,
such as René Kaës in France. We hope this book will help expand his
ideas to the English-speaking analytic world and give him his rightful
place as a pioneer in extending object relations theory, situating analy-
sis among the social sciences, beginning the process of group and
family analytic therapy, and leading the way in applying psycho-
analysis to the arts, history, and social thought. His innovations about
“operative groups” drew from, and contributed to, the importance of
xxviii INTRODUCTION

social research in institutions and to increased understanding of socio-

dynamics. This work has led the way in understanding and making
practical use of group process in organizational function in non-
mental health groups, and in the conduct of group therapy itself
(Tubert-Oklander, 2014). His writing applying analytic thought to
contemporary social situations, to sport, and to historical figures has
been a path finding example of the application of theories of the link
to wide ranging intellectual and practical situations.

A brief life of Pichon Rivière

Enrique Pichon Rivière was born in Geneva, Switzerland in 1907. His
parents, Alfonso Pichon and Josefina de la Rivière, belonged to the
educated French bourgeoisie and were ahead of their time. They pro-
moted socialist ideas and were admirers of French modern poets such
as Rimbaud and Baudelaire. Alfonso loved Rimbaud in particular,
perhaps because of the poet’s long exile from Europe.
Alfonso Pichon embarked on a military career at Saint-Cyr
Academy but was soon expelled because of his political ideas and his
relationship with the city mayor, Herriot, who was one of the coun-
try’s main socialist leaders. Later, Alfonso’s family sent him to Man-
chester in England to study the textile manufacturing process.
Pichon Rivière’s parents were well off. They moved from Lyon to
Geneva, where Enrique was born. When Enrique was a child in Gen-
eva (from 0–3 years old), he played in a park that Lenin used to visit.
This memory motivated his interest in Lenin and created a link. From
his years in Geneva he remembered a big black car, with a horn in the
shape of a snake, in which he sometimes rode with his siblings. When
Enrique was three years old, his family immigrated to Argentina. The
Argentine government, in promoting European immigration, offered
land in Chaco, a tropical region. As an adult, Pichon Rivière retained
some memories of leaving Geneva, crossing the French border on the
way to Barcelona, and sailing from there to South America.
On the same day the Pichon family emigrated, the anarchist
Francisco Ferrer was shot in Barcelona. Francisco Ferrer Guardia
(1859-1909) was a politician and pedagogue who founded the Modern
School, a coeducational school that provided a secular, more liberal
education. He was condemned by the government and the Church.
 INTRODUCTION xxix

Ferrer, accused of participating in an anti-clerical protest, and was

executed in the Montjuic prison in 1909. Concerning his execution, The
Times stated that a negligent or stupid government had confused the
freedom to teach, the freedom of conscience, and the right of reason
and expression, with the right of opposition, and had equated that
freedom with criminal agitation.
This socio-political context must have worried Pichon Rivière’s
parents enormously, to the extent that when Enrique stood before the
immigration officers he felt a terrible fear for his father’s safety. In that
situation, his mother showed great strength. According to Pichon
Rivière, she had the necessary mettle and courage to confront any dif-
ficulty or prejudice. Pichon Rivière felt his father’s terror. Alfonso was
a radical socialist, secretary to the highest leader of that party in
France. Perhaps his fear of being shot for his ideas caused them to
emigrate.
From the great pilgrimage across the ocean, Pichon Rivière only
remembered the feeling of a continuous motion. When they arrived in
Buenos Aires, they stayed for a few days and then left for Chaco.
Enrique never understood the real motivation for this move. He liked
to connect their emigration to the family mystery. His own family had
kept a family secret until he was about seven years old, when he was
told that his five siblings were the children of his father’s first wife.
Their mother had died, and Alfonso had married her sister, Josefina.
Enrique was their only child. The half-siblings, two girls and three
boys, were always affectionate toward him. He used to say that they
were deeply devoted to him. Nevertheless, Enrique felt that his
father’s marriages were like a shadow that perpetually hovered over
the family history. This first contact with a family secret later influ-
enced his interest in families and family mysteries, or secrets.
The family had brought everything with them (clothes, furniture,
tableware, and so on). The father was granted a land concession to
grow cotton in the Chaco region. This rainforest region was home
to the aboriginal Guarani people. The word “Guarani” means “war-
rior,” but the Guarani called themselves “Avá,” or “men.” They lived
in communal villages in the rainforest and were self-sufficient. They
also worked the land and produced ceramic arts and crafts. They
viewed the world as magical and ruled by guilt, and had discovered
the medicinal qualities of certain native plants. They were the first to
drink mate, an infusion made with mate leaves to achieve health,
xxx INTRODUCTION

vitality, and longevity. The tribes had to move their crops every four
or five years because the land would dry out.
The Chaco region was isolated from European influence, a dry
mosaic of meadows and forest where floods and drought alternated.
There were wild animals—pumas, jaguars, and snakes. The Guaranis,
Creoles (descendants of the European colonizers), and the first Euro-
pean settlers co-existed. The Guarani used the forest to hunt, the
Creoles raised cattle, and the settlers cultivated cotton and other
crops.
In Chaco, Pichon Rivière’s father wore European clothes while
hiring Guarani men to work his fields. He was, thus, able to experi-
ence the contrast between the two cultures. Enrique observed that
among the Guarani the “mad person” (the caraibé) was not segregated
but integrated into the community. This important experience influ-
enced his later ideas about the necessity of not segregating “mad
persons” from their family or social environment
For Pichon Rivière’s family, the years in Chaco were disastrous.
They had intense rains and floods. Alfonso strove to grow cotton but
failed. Nature did not help him. Once a swarm of locusts ate even the
straw roof of their bungalow. That night, the family had to sleep in the
open air. Pichon said he never forgot that when the roof vanished, his
father did not despair; he remarked, “How beautiful and blue is the
sky!” In the end, Alfonso lost everything.
They lived in the almost deserted Chaco region for four years.
Pichon Rivière learned to speak French first, and then the indigenous
Guarani. At the table the family spoke French, often talking about the
First World War, and other painful memories.
Alfonso never provoked anyone. He did not fear the Guarani and
did not take any special steps to protect himself, not even when he
traveled alone long distances by horseback on his own. Nevertheless,
whenever he left the house he would give guns to his wife and chil-
dren. He used to go to town once a month to change money to pay
their expenses. The family would get very upset during his absences;
they felt anxious and longed for his return.
Pichon spent his childhood and adolescence among the last
malones—groups of courageous Guarani men who would prey on
small towns and isolated people in the fields. They were a threat as a
group, but individually they were very hardworking. They never
attacked Pichon’s family, which made things worse in a way—the
 INTRODUCTION xxxi

fantasy of suffering such an attack increased proportionally to the

perceived level of danger. The family lived in constant tension and
fear.
Pichon Rivière always felt accepted by the Guarani. Those who
knew their language could relate to them without difficulty. Pichon
thought they were a human group without profound differences from
other groups. His father also liked them. Alfonso used to tell how,
when he was a child, he had strong fantasies about life in the African
wild. The Guaranis respected him and used to call him “the French-
man.” Pichon recalled how his father used to hang his fine suits on a
wire between two trees once a month. It seemed to be a ritual, a way
of remembering his identity but with a sense of grief.
Pichon Rivière remembered going hunting and fishing with his
father. In that area there was the deepest silence and the sun was
strong. They used to swim in the lake, even though there were alliga-
tors (yacarés). Alfonso taught his sons how to immobilize them by
putting a branch between their jaws. Pichon Rivière did it once and it
felt like an eternity. He and his brothers used to play soccer with other
children as a way to relieve their tension. They experienced several
floods when they helped evacuate people from their homes. Pichon
Rivière was always struck by the Guarani’s ability to hack down big
trees.
One night he panicked when he felt startled by the eyes of a puma,
but he was also fascinated. He improvised a reaction: He stayed
absolutely still and refrained from showing any emotion or attempt-
ing to defend himself or attack. The puma left. Something similar
happened once in the theater in Buenos Aires when he used what he
had learned in facing the puma. An anti-war play was being
performed when the police invaded the theater without warning.
Pichon remained motionless; he made no gesture. The police hit and
arrested people indiscriminately but did not even look at him. After-
ward, he left the theater without problem. He later resorted to this
technique while working at Las Mercedes Hospice. A patient sud-
denly attacked him with a knife. Pichon stood quietly and stared at
him until the patient dropped the knife.
Pichon first attended school in Chaco. He used to go by horseback
with his siblings, six of them on three horses. He drew attention to
himself because he wore his older brother’s mountain climbing shoes
with spikes.
xxxii INTRODUCTION

A local legend had made a strong impression on him. There was

supposed to be a special, little known native tribe that lived on Iberá,
a beautiful large lake in the heart of Corrientes province. Trips to the
lake were organized every year and transformed into a ritual. Pichon
used to beg his family to let him go, but they never did. The legend
left him with a strange feeling, because five of his friends went on this
trip and never came back.
For Pichon’s family, Iberá was a world of magic, of the unknown,
of the uncanny. They felt its appeal, but were also wary regarding its
connection to adventure, which also involved connection to tragedy.
Enrique granted significance to the clash between cultures—French
logic and rationality vs. the animistic magic of the Guarani. As he later
put it, “I might say that my vocation for the human sciences stemmed
from an attempt to elucidate the obscurity of the conflict between two
cultures” (Pichon Rivière, 1971, p. 7, translated for this edition). This
clash of cultures marked him forever.
After four years in Chaco, when Enrique was eight years old, the
family moved to the city of Goya in Corrientes Province. Pichon
remembered how in the trip they had to cross the river and almost
drowned. A powerful storm buffeted the sailboat they had rented. The
houses where they lived were never luxurious, but they had everything
they needed. In Goya, Alfonso used to sell vegetables, and Enrique
often went with him in the car and helped him offer his goods door-
to-door. One day, things changed. They met a lady who realized they
were foreigners and told them she had a son who was failing school
in Buenos Aires. She brought her son to Goya during the summer
break, and Alfonso tutored him in math and English. As a consequence,
other young people wanted to take lessons with him. The students did
well. Then Alfonso was hired as a bookkeeper for several businesses.
Pichon’s mother taught piano and voice. She had a beautiful voice
and led the church choir. She was courageous and enthusiastic, and
capable of confronting people if necessary. She liked to recite poems
by Racine and Corneille. Pichon considered his mother a fighter. Even
though they had lost everything and she belonged to an upper-class
family, she never complained. Pichon depicted his family as strong
and close knit, and willing to change reality. They never accepted
misfortune passively.
Pichon believed his parents had loved each other deeply. He
always admired their ability to adapt. His mother was the founder of
 INTRODUCTION xxxiii

the Colegio Nacional (National School) in Goya, where Pichon contin-

ued to experience the cultural contrast that had such a great influence
on him. In Goya, a small French community provided a European
cultural environment. Looking back, Pichon considered his parents a
model for handling everyday life. Nevertheless, a sadness accompa-
nied him all his life. His dreams of adventure, his fantasies and fears
were always colored by the sense that he was only a half-brother seek-
ing belonging.
During Pichon’s schooling in Goya, he was physically active. He
biked and swam, and became the youth boxing champion. He also
had a passion for soccer, which helped him develop a sense of the
operational nature of group situations. Pichon learned English and
had his first encounter with Freud’s work, which fascinated him,
when he read Freud’s essay on Jensen’s Gradiva. When Pichon was
thirteen years old, his father died. He had had an excellent relation-
ship with his father, but not with his mother, who “suffocated” him.
In Corrientes, he was one of the founders of the local Socialist
Party. He graduated from the high school established by his mother.
In 1924, he moved to Rosario to study medicine. After six months he
had to return to Goya to recover from pneumonia caused by his
bohemian lifestyle. His first job in Goya was teaching manners to
Polish prostitutes at the luxurious Madam Safo brothel. He also taught
children at a collective farm. In Goya, he became friends with Canoi,
the brothel’s janitor, who told Pichon the town secrets and also intro-
duced him to Freud’s work. Canoi told Pichon that there was a physi-
cian in Vienna who was doing the same things Pichon would like
to do.
When Pichon began to study medicine, his encounter with corpses
triggered a crisis. As he put it, “I strengthened my decision to work in
the realm of madness, which, while a form of death, can be reversed.
My first approaches to clinical psychiatry opened the way toward a
psychodynamic focus, . . . [toward] understanding behavior as a total-
ity in dialectic evolution” (Pichon Rivière, 1971, p. 9, translated for this
edition). His psychoanalytic vocation was tied to a need to elucidate
family mysteries and to inquire into the logic behind group behavior.
That same year, Pichon Rivière founded the soccer club Benjamin
Matienzo, and Canoi was the first president of the club. A year later,
when he was rehearsing in a theater, Pichon found a scientific journal
behind the stage and read Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of
xxxiv INTRODUCTION

Sexuality (1905d) for the first time. In 1925, he wrote his first poem,
“Connaisance de la mort” (Knowledge of death). Like his parents, he
read the work of Rimbaud and Baudelaire. In addition, he was partic-
ularly interested in Isidore Ducasse, the Count of Lautréamont,
conducting an in-depth inquiry into the poet’s life and work in
connection with the uncanny, or perhaps more accurately, that which
is “sinister”.
In 1926, he traveled to Buenos Aires to start his medical training
once again, now interested in psychiatry. At first, he lived in a board-
ing house that was referred to as “the Frenchman’s boarding house.”
There, he met the writer Roberto Arlt, with whom he became friends,
the poet Conrado Nalé Roxlo, and Jorq, a well-known researcher who
specialized in Chagas disease. Pichon considered Robert Arlt his liter-
ature teacher, but most of all, his life teacher. A friend at medical
school, Aberastury, introduced him to his sister Arminda “la negra”
Aberastury, whom Pichon later married. He shared with his friends a
love for the universal literary tradition, especially the Russian novel of
the time, and the fringe characters of the big city. They also felt a strong
affection for marginalized people and thought that it was possible for
these people to rise from their condition and wish for a different fate,
as did the characters of Arlt’s novel Los siete locos (The Seven Madmen).
Pichon Rivière placed society’s outsiders, those segregated by their
families, at the core of the therapeutic endeavor and of social respon-
sibility. He had a passion for interweaving disciplines and spheres—
psychiatry and psychoanalysis, psychoanalysis and literature, and
social psychology and everyday life. While in Buenos Aires, Pichon
made contact with leftist intellectuals. In 1930, he débuted as a jour-
nalist in the famous newspaper Crítica, run by renowned journalist
Natalio Botana, writing about art, sports, and humor.
In 1932, before his graduation, he began to practice as a psychia-
trist at the Torres Asylum, a home for “mentally retarded” persons,
where he started to study the role of the family of origin in mental
pathology. He proved that more than 60% of the patients that had
been diagnosed as “mentally retarded” showed no organic cause
for their illness. He differentiated oligophrenic patients, who
presented an organic cause (the “ugly” ones who had physical stig-
mas) from what he called oligothymic patients (the “pretty” ones),
whose illness resulted from emotional neglect. He learned that they
came from possessive families, and he showed that they had suffered
 INTRODUCTION xxxv

mistreatment. He developed learning and communication therapies to

re-educate his patients.
Pichon Rivière continued to play several sports, especially soccer
and—when he was young—boxing. He implemented his idea that
group membership and teamwork could be used to involve mentally
weak patients into society. He organized a soccer team in which the
patients ran behind the ball and entered the goal with it, always
winning. Pichon also loved to listen to, and dance, tango. He claimed
that some tangos, such as Cambalache, had a stunning poetic meaning
that portrayed the current social environment. Finally, he channeled
his socialist ideas by helping the Spanish Republic as the secretary of
a Spanish Republic Assistance Committee.
In 1936, he graduated from medical school and went on to work
at Las Mercedes Hospice, Buenos Aires’ psychiatric hospital (currently
called José Tomás Borda Neuropsychiatric Hospital), where he
worked for more than fifteen years. The hospice housed 4,500 men-
tally ill patients, more than 60% of them poorly treated and isolated
because abandoned by their relatives. Pichon Rivière’s first task was
to train the nurses. He realized that they had no knowledge of mental
health or illness. Without education into mental illness, they did not
know what to tell patients or families. Teaching them became his main
duty. To do so, he created a technique, the forerunner of what later
became his “operative groups.” In these groups, he discussed the vari-
ous cases with the nurses. He was amazed by their capacity to learn.
They had amassed great experience over the years, but had been
unable to conceptualize it.
Pichon Rivière had an organic psychosocial perspective—he never
shut himself up in his office. He visualized the weft of the institutional
link and developed a strategy to work through the nurses, whom he
considered the capillaries of the hospice. Thus, he helped restore
patients’ dignity and secured better care for them. This group experi-
ence later gave rise to his theory of the conceptual, referential, and
operational schema (CROS).
In 1937, Dr. López Lecube, a psychiatrist at the Hospice, was
beheaded by a patient. The incident upset Pichon’s family, and his
mother regretted having allowed him to study psychiatry. This mur-
der was the expression of patients’ reaction against this doctor’s
extreme authoritarianism. He treated his patients as if they were his
employees. A group of inmates planned the murder and designated a
xxxvi INTRODUCTION

member of the group to carry it out. Pichon interpreted the killing as

a rebellion for dignity. He said that mentally ill people should be
treated with respect due to any human being, and that we must not
humiliate them. He believed that psychiatrists had a dictatorial, disre-
spectful way with patients.
In 1938, Pichon Rivière founded the first adolescent department in
America at Las Mercedes Hospice. From 1939 to 1948 he taught a
course on child psychiatry. He co-founded the Argentine Psycho-
analytic Association together with his training analyst, Angel Garma,
Arnaldo Rascovsky, Marie Langer, Celes Cárcamo, and Guillermo
Ferrari Hardoy. In 1943, he taught the course “Introduction to Psycho-
analytic Psychiatry” at the Psychoanalytic Institute. In 1944, he met a
Uruguayan poet, Edmundo Montagne, at the hospice. Before commit-
ting suicide, Montagne encouraged Pichon to research the life and
work of Isidore Ducasse, known as the Count of Lautréamont.
In 1945, during a strike of the nurses at the Hospice, Pichon Rivière
decided to teach nursing to those patients who were less seriously ill.
He organized functional leaderships and rotated tasks. He claimed
that the patients who worked as nurses treated the other patients with
more devotion and were more competent than the actual nurses. He
realized that hospice patients experienced a break in the family link
and in the link to the institution, so he created a link network, a social
fabric, in the hospice in order that everyone make an effort to help
patients recover.
In his method of assessment of patients’ condition, Pichon Rivière
included their families, the institutional setting, the hospital popula-
tion, and the disturbing effect of the medical team, among others.
Diagnosis hinged on the presence or absence of link networks. He
understood the symbolic structure underlying the different manifes-
tations of madness. He identified an unconscious dimension whose
effects are revealed in silences (in things that are not said, thought,
reflected upon, or understood) and in family absences and breaks in
links. He said that while these patients could not offer any explana-
tion for their situation, the institution’s deficiencies had affected
patients’ capacity for symbol formation.
It was in the hospice that the operative group was born. The staff
grew from two psychiatrists to twenty-five. The learning process
undergone by the nurses was astonishing. The link network served
as a functional structure that guided their work. Pichon Rivière
 INTRODUCTION xxxvii

succeeded in creating a symbolic, subjective, institutional structure

based on warm, welcoming practices, as well as on reflection about
practice. He inquired into repetitive mechanisms to restore a direction
consistent with the hospital’s task that was tied to patients’ health.
This strategy increased the vitality and enthusiasm expressed in the
links.
In 1946, the Uruguayan government invited Pichon Rivière to give
a lecture in honor of Lautréamont’s centennial. In 1948, he published
his article “Historia de la psicosis maniac–depresiva” (History of
manic–depressive psychosis), where he described his theory of the
single illness. This essay was part of the book Psicoanálisis de la melan-
colía (Psychoanalysis of Melancholia), edited by the Argentine
Psychoanalytic Association.
In 1949, Pichon resigned from his post at Las Mercedes Hospice
because other physicians disapproved of the systems he had created.
They wanted patients to be segregated, which caused their illnesses to
become chronic. Pichon recounted a conflict with medical residents
who belonged to extreme right groups whose wing faced his depart-
ment. They threw stones, threatened him, and filled his ward with
condoms, accusing him of allowing sexual license. Faced with these
obstacles posed by doctors and authorities, he went to see the Vice
President of the country, who was from Goya and had been “like a
father” to him. To his surprise, the Vice President advised him to
resign because if he did not, the hospice authorities would dismiss
him. Having no choice, Pichon left the hospital.
Pichon Rivière was always interested in the connection between
art, literature, and madness. He carried out important studies on the
life and work of Isidore Ducasse, Count of Lautréamont, author of the
The Songs of Maldoror, and on Antonin Artaud. He was drawn to surre-
alism. In 1951, he traveled to Europe. In Geneva, he offered a series of
courses on psychoanalysis with schizophrenic patients. In London, he
met Melanie Klein and supervised with her. He was also invited to the
XIV Conference of French-Speaking Psychoanalysts, where he lec-
tured on “Some observations about the transference in psychotic
patients” (see Chapter Three in this volume). In Paris, Pichon met
Jacques Lacan, visited Tristan Tzara, with whom he also discussed
Lautréamont, and met with André Bréton. Bréton made arrangements
for Pichon Rivière to give a “lecture” about Lautréamont in a café
for members of the surrealist movement. Pichon Rivière had been
xxxviii INTRODUCTION

interested in this French poet because of the latter’s contact with the
uncanny (better translated as “weird” or “sinister”) and his life
circumstances (see Chapters Eight and Ten in this volume). When he
was asked why he had decided to become a psychiatrist, his answer
was, “My search has been to know about men and, in particular, to
know about sadness” (Del Psicoanálisis a la Psicología Social (From
Psychoanalysis to Social Psychology)) (Pichon Rivière, 1971, p. 12).
After his return to Argentina, Pichon Rivière founded IADES,
the Argentine Social Studies Institute in 1953. Later, this institute
was integrated into the First Private School of Dynamic Psychiatry,
which he created together with José Bleger, David Liberman, Edgardo
Rolla, Diego Garcia Reinoso, and Fernando Taragano. This institution
became first the School of Social Psychiatry and then, in 1967, the
School of Social Psychology. In his column in the magazine Panorama,
he wrote about everyday life, and about soccer. He was passionate
about soccer, and spoke metaphorically about the family as “a soccer
team”.
In 1957, he separated from his wife, Arminda Aberastury, with
whom he had had three sons—Enrique, Joaquín, and Marcelo. A few
years later, he met his second wife, Coca, a pianist, who died tragically
in a car accident in 1964 while traveling to see him because he had
been hospitalized in Córdoba.
Pichon continued to publish, conduct research, and travel to
conferences in Europe. It was in 1960 that he published his theory
about the CROS, along with other articles, in a three-volume book
titled Del psicoanálisis a la psicología social (From Psychoanalysis to
Social Psychology). Later, he published Psicología de la vida cotidiana
(Psychology of Everyday Life) with Ana Quiroga, his new companion
and his successor at the School of Social Psychology, which she still
heads. His last work, Conversaciones con Enrique Pichon Rivière (Con-
versations with Enrique Pichon Rivière), was published in 1976 by
Vicente Zito Lema.
For his seventieth birthday, he had a celebration at the Hebraic
Argentine Society Theater. Many people mounted the stage to pay
him tribute. There were poets, psychiatrists, social psychologists, psy-
choanalysts, actors, sports commentators, tango composers, and
artists. He received telegrams that were read in public. Plays were per-
formed, and fragments from The Songs of Maldoror were read. Students
gave speeches; musical groups played. The beautiful event honored
 INTRODUCTION xxxix

his lifestyle. People cheered endlessly with a feeling of farewell. He

died fifteen days later, on 16 July 1977.

An introduction to this volume

Part I presents Pichon Rivière’s writing. To show the wide range of
Pichon’s interests, we sought to include his most significant writings
in each of the numerous fields into which he ventured. Most of
these writings were collected in his 1971 volumes Del psicoanálisis a la
psicología social (From Psychoanalysis to Social Psychology) (1971a–h).
The first two chapters, “New problems facing psychiatry” and
“Neurosis and psychosis: a theory of illness,” offer a succinct sum-
mary of his key ideas on mental illness and on the development of the
human psyche.
Chapter Three, “Some observations on the transference in psy-
chotic patients,” is based on Pichon Rivière’s vast clinical experience
with psychosis, and challenges the Freudian claim that psychotic
patients are incapable of engaging in a transference relationship,
instead describing unique qualities of transference in the treatment of
psychotic states.
Chapter Four, “Operative group technique,” discusses the major
original ideas developed by Pichon Rivière concerning work with
groups. Operative groups must carry out a task that binds group
members, and is centered theoretically on everyone’s need to over-
come anxieties—or fears, as Pichon called them—that hinder this task.
These are the fear of attack (paranoid anxiety) and the fear of loss
(depressive anxiety).
Chapters Five and Six, “Family groups: an operative approach”
and “The treatment of family groups: collective psychotherapy,” are
based on Pichon Rivière’s experience with families, and were among
the first papers in any language to address the use of psychoanalysis
in family therapy. These papers influenced the first generation of
family therapists who began their work in Argentina, and in this way
have had a strong but unacknowledged influence in family therapy
worldwide.
Chapter Seven, “The link,” discusses what is perhaps the most
important and influential of Pichon Rivière’s concepts. The term is
widely used today, but Pichon was the first psychoanalyst in the
xl INTRODUCTION

world to apply it. His conception must be distinguished from other

notions of link that have evolved later.
Chapter Eight provides an important and exemplary exercise in
the application of psychoanalytic thinking to biography and art. It is
the comprehensive study of the life and work of Isidore Ducasse, the
Count of Lautréaumont, a French-Uruguayan poet who wrote The
Songs of Maldoror. This study evinces Pichon’s concern with literature
and madness as well as with the sinister, and the effects of early loss,
and abandonment, themes that always aroused Pichon’s interest.
Ducasse experienced his mother’s suicide when he was one and a half
years old, his father’s abandonment a few years later, and various
family mysteries. Pichon traces the way these influenced the develop-
ment of his personality, the unfolding of his life, and their effect on his
art.
Chapter Nine gathers some football-related texts published in
“Some essays concerning everyday life,” written with Ana Quiroga,
which were collected in several short essays that first appeared in
Primera Plana, a current affairs magazine published in the 1960s. They
show Pichon’s wish to spread his ideas beyond a specialized audience.
Passionate about soccer, Pichon speaks metaphorically of the family as
a soccer team. In a soccer team, each player is assigned a position and
a role (defense, offense, and so on), but this role may change depend-
ing on the vicissitudes of the game—a defender may become an
attacker, and vice versa. The same is true for families. Family members
have specific roles, but in certain circumstances they must develop
enough plasticity to assume other members’ functions. Furthermore,
he examines the dynamics of the game from multiple perspectives,
including the meaning of the ball. This capacity to view phenomena
from every imaginable perspective is a hallmark of the richness of
Pichon Rivière’s thought, and contributes immensely to its richness as
a source of evolving theory.
Part II offers essays by several eminent modern contributors to
psychoanalysis in South America and beyond. These essays by Pichon
Rivière’s students and those influenced heavily by him offer insight
into his personality, the warmth and enthusiasm of his teaching, the
incisiveness of his insights, and the range and importance of his
vision. Roberto Losso, the senior editor of this volume, gives the
reader a sense of Pichon Rivière’s importance as an analytic pioneer.
He was one of the first of Pichon Rivière’s disciples and tells some of
 INTRODUCTION xli

the experiences of his personal contact with him. Then Rosa Jaitin,
another of his students, reflects on the transmission of his ideas. A
special offering is the interview by Rosa Marcone of Ana de Quiroga,
Pichon Rivière’s last companion. In this interview, Ana de Quiroga
reflects on the importance of Pichon’s revolutionary ideas in the devel-
opment not only of analytic theory and practice, but of wider ranging
applications as well. Ana de Quiroga has continued with the direction
of the School of Social Psychology and has developed it. Nowadays,
the School has several sites in outlying cities of Argentina.
René Kaës knew Pichon and his works from his visit to Buenos
Aires in 1965. Kaës became the first to spread Pichon Rivière’s ideas
in France, and was later in charge of the translation of Del Psicoanálisis
a la Psicología Social into French.
Alberto Eiguer tells his personal experience with Pichon Rivière,
while Vicente Zito Lema describes his personal and professional effect
on him and the later evolution of his own ideas.
David Scharff compares the impact of Pichon’s ideas with British
object relations conceptualizations that, stemming from the same
roots, evolved in separate and complementary ways over the same
years as those in which Pichon Rivière developed his. The closing
chapter is a glossary of Pichon Rivière’s major ideas and terms, assem-
bled by Roberto Losso and Lea de Setton.
As editors, we have had the pleasure of immersing ourselves in
Pichon Rivière’s writing, and have felt the power of his vision. We
hope that this volume will give the reader who is new to his ideas the
same reward.
 PART I
PICHON RIVIÈRE’S WRITINGS
CHAPTER ONE

New problems facing psychiatry

he history of psychiatry has been marked at different times by

T researchers’ speculations concerning the possibility of a kinship

among all mental illnesses based on a universal core. Yet, these
speculations, plagued by an organicist conception of the origin of
illnesses [which considers that illnesses always have an organic cause:
Translator’s note] exclude from mental pathology the dialectic dimen-
sion, where quantity becomes quality through successive leaps. In the
case of manic-depressive psychosis, for example, the mechanistic,
organicist conception led to a division into endogenous and exoge-
nous forms without any indication of a correlation between the two.
Freud sees the relationship between endogenous and exogenous as
a relationship between dispositional aspects and aspects linked to the
subject’s fate. That is to say, disposition and fate are complementary.
Furthermore, when they focus on endogenous factors that are not
psychologically understandable, so-called traditional psychiatrists
reveal their inability to detect the degree of deprivation that, when
impacting a threshold that varies according to the subject, completes
the multi-dimensional structuring of neuroses or psychoses. When a
neurosis or psychosis is considered endogenous, the possibility of
modifying it is implicitly denied. Psychiatrists take on the role of

3
4 THE LINKED SELF IN PSYCHOANALYSIS

conditioning patients’ evolution. In this way, they further the family

group’s goal, which is to segregate the sick member because he or she
is the spokesperson of the group’s anxiety. Briefly, psychiatrists
become the leaders of resistance to change at a community level and
treat patients as subjects who are “wrong” from a rational point of
view.
In recent years, practitioners have added the use of dialectic logic
and the notion of conflict to their instrumental use of formal logic.
According to dialectic logic, terms are not excluded but establish a
genetic continuity based on successive syntheses. The corrective or
therapeutic operation is conducted by following the path of a non-
linear link that develops as a continuous spiral. Through this spiral,
contradictions between the different parts of a subject may be
resolved. A dialectic set of problems is, thus, incorporated into the
corrective process or into the link with the therapist that serves as a
general framework to inquire into contradictions arising both within
the therapeutic operation and in its context.
The fragmentation of the object of knowledge into particular
domains, a product of the fragmentation of the link, is followed by a
second moment of integration (convergent epistemology). Two con-
flicting processes (fragmentation vs. integration) thus develop that are
made complementary by the corrective emotional experience. We
could also say that the illness and the corrective experience represent
two phases of the same process. If therapists set this sequence in
motion, depending on the effectiveness of their technique, they may
be doubly successful. They may prevent both the patterning of situa-
tions onto dilemmas, which are the cause of all modes of stagnation,
and the formation of stereotyped behaviors, which acquire deviant
features due to the gap between moments of divergence and moments
of convergence.
Integration of these two phases is hindered by the inescapable
presence of an epistemological obstacle in the field of learning. This
obstacle, represented by noise in communication theory and by the
third party in the triangular situation, transforms the dialectic spiral
of learning about reality into a closed circle or stereotype that func-
tions as a pathogenic structure. What disturbs the entire context of
knowledge is the third party. Its presence at the level of the link and
of dialogue conditions the most severe disturbances in communica-
tion and in learning about reality. My definition of link, a notion that
 NEW PROBLEMS FACING PSYCHIATRY 5

replaces the Freudian term “object relation,” derives from these obser-
vations. As an interaction mechanism, every link should be defined as
a Gestalt that is simultaneously bicorporal and tripersonal. (Gestalt
considered as Gestaltung introduces the temporal dimension.)
The right instrument to apprehend the reality of objects emerges
from this Gestalt. Links configure a complex structure that includes a
transmitter-receptor system, a message, a channel, signs, symbols, and
noise. An intrasystemic and intersystemic analysis reveals that, to
attain instrumental effectiveness, the conceptual, referential, and
operational frameworks or schema of transmitter and receiver must be
similar. When this is not the case, misunderstanding arises.
My entire theory of mental health and illness focuses on the study
of the link as a structure. Active adaptation to reality, a basic criterion
of health, is assessed according to the operating capacity of ego tech-
niques (defense mechanisms). Their multi-dimensional (horizontal
and vertical), adaptive, operational, and gnosiological [whose goal is
to acquire knowledge—Translator’s note] uses in each here-and-
now—according to the situation and through instrumental plan-
ning—must be considered a sign of mental health expressed by a
scant deviation or bias from the natural model.
This process is possible thanks to a first phase that we could call
theoretical, which is implemented by means of perception, penetra-
tion, depositation [denoting the act of depositing—Translator’s Note],
and resonance (empathy) techniques whereby the object is recognized
and maintained at an optimal distance from the subject (alterity).
Consequently, the quality and dynamic of knowledge condition an
activity that bears a unique style of approach to, and creation of,
objects. Such an approach tends to apprehend and modify the object,
giving rise to reality judgments (a criterion for determining mental
health or illness) through constant reference to, verification of, and
assessment of, the external world. Active adaptation to reality and
learning are indissolubly linked. When healthy subjects apprehend
and transform the object, they also modify themselves by participating
in a dialectical interplay. In this interplay, the synthesis that solves a
dilemmatic situation becomes the starting point or thesis of another
antinomy that must, in turn, be solved. In this way, a continuous spiral-
ing process develops. Mental health is this process whereby we learn
about reality by confronting, handling, and finding integrative solu-
tions to conflicts. As long as we take this course, our communication
6 THE LINKED SELF IN PSYCHOANALYSIS

network is constantly being readjusted. Only thus is it possible to

produce a thought capable of engaging in a dialogue with others and
facing change.
This description refers to the superstructure of the process. The
field of the infrastructure holds motivations, needs, and aspirations. It
is the unconscious with its fantasies (motivation), which result from
internal group members’ interrelations (the internal group as an
immediate and mediated internalized group). This phenomenon may
be studied in the content of hallucinatory activity. During this activity,
patients hear the voice of the leader of an unconscious conspiracy in
dialogue with the self, which they control and observe, as it is a
projected part of themselves.
Another curious aspect of the evolution of psychiatry is that so
far, practitioners have only stressed the relationship with the projected
persecutory object. Then a field as vast as the first one opened with
the discovery of a pathology of the good link and the group dimen-
sion of unconscious content. This dimension is apprehended through
the notion of an internal group in constant interrelation with the exter-
nal group.
In both motivational fantasies and hallucination we have found a
range of motivations, needs, and aspirations that underlie the learn-
ing process, communication, and operations aiming to obtain gratifi-
cation with regard to certain objects. Actions and decisions are based
on this cluster of motivations, and achievement is tied more to appre-
hending the object than to the release of tension described by Freud.
Learning and communication, instrumental to securing the object,
have a motivational substructure. Motivational behavior, which is the
type of behavior most closely linked to subjects’ fate, shares this dual
structure, whose primary direction is connected to early stages of
development.
The universal process promoted by motivation is the re-creation of
the object. Object re-creation is individually determined in each sub-
ject by the interaction of biological needs and the ego’s instrumental
apparatus. The secondary directional aspect—choice of task, choice of
partner, and so on—is screened by the group, which eventually deter-
mines these choices. The discovery of motivation is Freud’s greatest
contribution; he related phenomena in the here-and-now to subjects’
personal histories. This relationship is called the “meaning of the
symptom.”
 NEW PROBLEMS FACING PSYCHIATRY 7

In this way, the double dimension of behavior, verticality and hori-

zontality, becomes understandable for a dynamic, historical, and
structural psychology that is far removed from traditional psychiatry
(which works only in the descriptive, phenomenal field). This double
dimension conditions essential aspects of the corrective process. Cor-
rection is achieved through the explanation of the implicit. This con-
ception coincides with the depiction of the socioeconomic sphere
developed by some philosophers, economists, and sociologists. These
scholars refer to a superstructure and an infrastructure and define
need as the dynamic core of action.
In the environment of the therapeutic process, the gap between
these two dimensions is bridged by way of an instrument of produc-
tion expressed in terms of knowledge. This instrument facilitates a
progressive shift from alienation, or passive adaptation to reality, to
active adaptation to reality. In our culture, men and women suffer
from the fragmentation and dispersion of the object of their task. They
are, thus, left in a condition of deprivation and anomie that prevents
them from preserving the link with that object, with which they have
a fragmented, transient, and alienated relationship.
The sense of insecurity regarding their task is compounded
by uncertainty tied to political changes. These two feelings have an
impact on the family context, where deprivation tends to become
widespread. Individuals feel incapable of performing their role. As a
result, the threshold of tolerance of frustration associated with the
level of their aspirations is considerably reduced. Feelings of failure
set in motion the illness process by configuring a depressive structure.
The alienation of the link from its task is displaced to subjects’ links
with internal objects. The entire conflict is, thus, internalized. It shifts
from the external to the internal world, with its primary model of a
triangular situation.
This depression, which displays the structural features of neuro-
tic depression or neurosis of failure, plunges the subject into a process
of regression toward infantile positions. The family group remains
in a state of anomie in relation to its member’s illness, thus deepen-
ing his depression. This is the starting point of a regression process
that articulates with a previous depressive structure and reinforces
it.
We should now ponder the prevalence of other depressions and
analyze them from the point of view of their development. In other
8 THE LINKED SELF IN PSYCHOANALYSIS

words, we will take the opposite course to the one we take in the
therapeutic process, where we start from the here-and-now. To make
my theory of a single illness clear, I resort to a frame of reference that
draws from the theories of Klein, Freud, and Fairbairn. I take into
account the first two development positions, namely, paranoid–
schizoid (instrumental) and depressive (existential pathogenic), to
which I add the pathorhythmic (temporal) position. The last one com-
prises the different rates of symptom development in the pathogenic
or depressive position, which is structured on the basis of the instru-
mental paranoid–schizoid position. Throughout this journey, I remain
faithful to my theory of the link.
Before I continue to describe these positions, however, I would like
to discuss the components of the causality of neurosis or psychosis—
in Freud’s words, the etiological equation. I consider that the prin-
ciples ruling the formation of a pathological structure are as follows:
(1) multi-causality, (2) phenomenal plurality, (3) genetic and func-
tional continuity, (4) structural mobility and interaction, (5) role, link,
spokesperson, and (6) triangular situation.
The first principle we should consider is multicausality, or the etio-
logical equation, a dynamic and formative process expressed in terms
of the number of causes. It is worth describing the different factors in
detail. There is a constitutional factor that may be divided into two
preceding ones, namely, the genetic factor strictly speaking, and the
one that acts early during intrauterine life. The influence experienced
by the fetus by virtue of its biological relationship with the mother
already includes a social factor, since the mother’s security or insecu-
rity depends on the type of link she has forged with her intimate part-
ner and on the characteristics of her family group.
Concerning the triangular situation, the social factor operates
from the beginning. The impact of children’s development on the
family group is added to the constitutional factor. This interaction
results in the so-called dispositional factor, or disposition, which,
according to Freud, represents the fixation of the libido at a certain
stage of its progress. Subjects return to this stage during regression in
order to acquire tools, as they did at the dispositional stage, a return
promoted by the current factor. The dispositional factor becomes
complementary to the current conflict, which I have described as a
triggering depression. A regression thus begins, indicating the onset
of illness.
 NEW PROBLEMS FACING PSYCHIATRY 9

Phenomenal plurality

This principle is based on the consideration of three phenomenal

dimensions of the mind and their respective projections, labeled in
terms of areas: Area One, or mind, Area Two, or body, and Area Three,
or external world. These three areas are important from a phenome-
nal point of view, for diagnosis is based on the prevalence of one area
over the others. Nevertheless, with regard to behavior, a stratification
analysis shows that the three areas are involved in this process, albeit
at different levels. This coexistence configures behavior in the shape
of a Gestalt or Gestaltung of constant interaction. Nevertheless, we
must consider that the organizing process, that is, planning in terms
of strategy, tactics, and logistics, operates in the self, located in Area
One, which means that no behavior is foreign to this area. Any discus-
sion that denies this totality will produce a blatant dichotomy.
In the instrumental paranoid–schizoid position that follows regres-
sive depression, these areas are used to situate opposite objects and
links in a divalent environment. As we said earlier, the aim is to
preserve the good and control the bad, thereby blocking the fusion
of the two valences. Such fusion would entail the configuration of
the depressive position and the emergence of chaos, mourning, cata-
strophe, destructiveness, loss, loneliness, ambivalence, and guilt. If the
instrumental position is not frozen, it operates based on splitting; it
forges good and bad links with its respective objects. This process con-
stitutes the basis for a genetic structural and functional classification
of illnesses that hinges on the location of these two links in the three
areas, with all their potential variations.
To illustrate with some examples, in phobias—such as agorapho-
bia or claustrophobia—the bad, paranoid, or phobic object is projected
onto Area Three, where it operates. A phobic situation is thus
produced where both the bad object (phobic–paranoid) and the good
object (in the guise of a phobic companion) are situated in the same
area. On the one hand, patients fear the attack of the phobic object; on
the other, they protect the supportive object, the depositary of their
good parts, by means of an avoidance mechanism. In this way, the two
objects are kept apart, and patients prevent the catastrophe that might
occur if avoidance failed.
An entire classification might be developed according to the area
involved and the valence of the part-object. Much more operational
10 THE LINKED SELF IN PSYCHOANALYSIS

than commonly known classifications, this one views the corrective

operation in the terms already mentioned and as a process that moves
or shifts from one structure to another. This is the fourth principle
(structural mobility), which may be observed during the onset of the
illness as well as during the corrective process.

Genetic and functional continuity

The existence of a paranoid–schizoid position with part-objects, that

is, a split object, presupposes an earlier stage when four-way links are
established with a total object. Splitting occurs at birth, and every grat-
ifying link leads the baby to view the object as good. This is what
Freud (incorrectly, in my opinion) calls the life instinct (Eros). The
other part of the primary link and its object, in turn, become a bad
object based on frustrating experiences—a persecutory link that Freud
once again considers instinctual. In this case it is Thanatos, the death,
aggressiveness, or destructiveness instinct.
As you can see, in my view, the life and death instincts are already
experiences in the form of behavior that include a social component
through gratifying or frustrating moments. That is how children’s
incorporation into the social world takes place. Frustration and grati-
fication facilitate children’s ability to discriminate among several types
of experiences as an initial manifestation of thought. Such dis-
crimination allows them to develop a first set of values.
The splitting of the total object is motivated by the need to prevent
its destruction. Splitting it into a good and a bad object gives shape to
two primary behaviors tied to loving and being loved, and hating and
being hated. These two social behaviors define the start of children’s
socialization process; children are assigned a role and a status within
the primary or family group.
Returning to the starting point of proto-depression, with the
appearance of splitting as the first ego technique we enter the para-
noid–schizoid position, described by Fairbairn and Klein simultane-
ously with my first works on schizophrenia. This defensive technique
leads to the development of two links, a situation of part-object in a
divalent relationship (not in an ambivalent relationship, as Bleuler
claimed), introjection and projection, processes of omnipotent con-
trol, idealization, negation, and so on. Based on the concept of the
 NEW PROBLEMS FACING PSYCHIATRY 11

paranoid–schizoid position, we may revise the notion of repression, so

significant in psychoanalytic theory and the starting point of the
divergence between Freud and Janet. Freud stated that the process of
repression was a single, characteristic structure in the genesis of
neurosis. Janet, by contrast, maintained that primary process could be
defined in terms of dissociation.
I think that this dispute may be resolved by considering repression
a complex process that includes dissociation or splitting, processes of
introjection and projection, and omnipotent control. For example, the
failure of omnipotent control constitutes what Freud called the return
of the repressed. Everything that has been negated, fragmented, intro-
jected, or projected may return to any of the three areas or phenome-
nal dimensions where the mind locates links and objects to control
them better. The self experiences the returning repressed matter as
foreign and alien.
The dominant anxiety in the paranoid–schizoid position is perse-
cutory or paranoid anxiety. Subjects fear a potential attack on the
ego as retaliation against the projection of hostility (a product of
frustration), which comes back, albeit magnified or rekindled, like a
boomerang they have turned against themselves. Paranoid anxiety
appears to originate in human objects or displacements that have
become depositaries of the hostility projected by the ego in order to
get rid of it. To such anxiety, I add the one caused by the vicissitudes
of the good link, that is, by subjects’ dependence on objects that are
depositaries of this type of feelings. These vicissitudes result in a type
of anxiety that, while different from persecutory anxiety, is often
confused with it. I am talking about the feeling of “being at the mercy
of the depositary.”
Paranoid anxiety and the “feeling of being at the mercy of”
(depressive anxiety of the schizoid position) coexist and cooperate in
every normal neurotic structure. The old differentiation between anxi-
ety, anguish, and fear disappears as we include the dimension of the
unconscious or the implicit. The definitions of anxiety and anguish
were flawed due to the concept of objectless relation. The paranoid–
schizoid position is linked to the growing idealization of the good
object. This defensive technique allows the ego to preserve the object.
As idealization intensifies, control of, and detachment from, the bad,
persecutory object increases, and the good object becomes invulnera-
ble. Tension between the two objects in different areas demands the
12 THE LINKED SELF IN PSYCHOANALYSIS

emergence of a new technique to cope with the unbearable nature of

persecution. This new technique is omnipotent magical negation.
Among the other processes operating here, we should mention
projective identification. Through this mechanism, the ego may
project parts of itself with different aims. For instance, it may project
the bad parts to get rid of them and to attack and destroy the object
(invasion). Good parts may also be projected, for example, to save
them from internal badness or to improve the external object through
primitive projective reparation.
Now we can understand what I call a schizoid or neurotic depres-
sive situation, which is caused by loss of control over the depositary
and the deposited. This depression should not be confused with the
depression of the basic depressive position. In the latter, we observe
the presence of a total object, four-way links, ambivalence, guilt,
sadness, and loneliness in relation to subjects’ own image. In schizoid
depression, by contrast, we find a link with a part-object where good
aspects are deposited. It is a depression experienced in the outside
world without guilt, in a divalent situation, and it is accompanied by
the feeling of being at the mercy of the part-object.
The basic feeling of schizoid depression is nostalgia. Klein des-
cribed it when she referred to ordinary farewells, but did not notice
its distinct structure. The good part, placed in the travelling object or
depositary, detaches from the ego, which is, thereby, weakened and
will not stop thinking about its fate from then on. And while its mani-
fest concern is connected to the depositary, the ego is actually worried
about the condition of its detached parts. Consequently, a situation of
ongoing uneasiness ensues.
Nostalgia differs from melancholia. Etymologically, it is a conden-
sation of the Greek words nostos (return) and algos (pain) created by
Hofer. Splitting allows the ego to emerge from chaos and organize its
experiences. Given that discrimination is one of the first manifestations
of this behavior of Area One, splitting lies at the heart of every thought.

The depressive position

When the paranoid–schizoid position succeeds in handling the anxi-
eties of the first months, it drives children to organize their internal
and external worlds. Splitting, introjection, and projection enable
 NEW PROBLEMS FACING PSYCHIATRY 13

them to arrange their emotions and perceptions and separate the good
(ideal object) from the bad (bad object). Integration processes become
more stable and continuous, and a new stage of development arises,
the depressive position, characterized by the presence of a total object
and a four-way link.
Children undergo a sudden change; the existence of four ways in
the link gives rise to a conflict of ambivalence from which guilt
emerges. The physiological maturation of the ego results in the sys-
tematization of perceptions of multiple origins and the development
and organization of memory. In this stage, the dominant anxiety or
fear is related to the loss of the object and is due to the coexistence in
time and space of bad (destructive) and good aspects of the link struc-
ture. This structure encompasses the ego, the link, and the object.
Along with loneliness, feelings of mourning, guilt, and loss consti-
tute the existential core. The task of the ego at this time consists in
halting potential or incipient chaos by appealing to inhibition, the
only ego mechanism or technique that corresponds to this position.
This early inhibition, more or less intense in each case, constitutes a
stereotyped pattern and a complex system of resistance to change that
involves learning, communication, and identity disturbances. Regres-
sion from higher positions of development toward these dispositional
points, which configure the context of Klein’s infantile neurosis,
revives the stereotype known as basic depression, with the conse-
quent crippling of the instrumental techniques of the schizoid posi-
tion. If the regressive process of falling ill reactivates splitting and all
the other schizoid mechanisms and two partial links are thereby
restructured (one totally good and the other totally bad), different
types of illnesses will be configured depending on the location of
these objects in the three areas.
To the two positions described by Klein and Fairbairn (predomi-
nantly spatial structures), we add the time factor to build the four-
dimensional structure of the mind. The pathorhythmic situation is
expressed as terms, speeds, or rhythms that constitute stages of patho-
logical structuring. These may range from inhibition and slowing of
mental processes to explosion, where every occurrence bears the fea-
tures of childish tantrums, on which it is modeled. If this bipolarity
defines the ways in which anxieties, and the ego techniques aimed to
control and work through them, develop and are expressed, we are
dealing with the wide field of paroxysmal illness (epilepsy).
14 THE LINKED SELF IN PSYCHOANALYSIS

When pondering the etiology and pathogenesis of neurosis and

psychosis, we should consider the process of falling ill and recovering
(during the corrective operation with the psychotherapist), as well as
the restoration of instrumental aspects of the learning–communication
pair. It is to this disturbance, which is constitutive of subjects and is
present in the depressive position during childhood development,
that patients return in the regressive process (set in motion by the trig-
gering depression).
The functionality of this process must be described in terms of
“returning to the place where ego techniques were effective.” Still, by
hindering and crippling the depressive structure, regression renders
this structure rigid and repetitive (stereotyped). Depression, hence,
remains latent as a basic position. The depressive structure acted as a
dispositional point during development. Even though basic fears were
under control, it stagnated as a prototypical structure and constitutes
the pathogenic core of the process of becoming ill. This is what I call
basic depression (developmental depression plus regressive depres-
sion with aspects of proto-depression).
Triggering depression, in turn, is the typical starting point of
illness. Its common denominator, according to Freud, is the feeling
of lack of accomplishment in relation to the level of aspiration. If we
study its structure, we can reformulate this factor as depression due
to loss or deprivation with regard not only to the libido (lack of satis-
faction and stagnation), but also to the object (object deprivation) or to
a situation where the object appears to be unattainable due to instru-
mental powerlessness of manifold origins.
At first, subjects’ inability to establish a link with the object brings
about fantasies of recovery. Such fantasies are related to the instru-
ments of the link (for example, in the case of the phantom limb after
amputation, there is denial of the loss of that limb). This reaction
constitutes an immediate defense in the face of loss that does not,
however, withstand confrontation with reality. Consequently, subjects
plunge into depression. When the harsh truth of loss prevails, there
begins the process of regression and working-through of mourning,
which delineates the phenomenal and genetic complexity of regres-
sive depression.
In sum, the structure of the depressive behavioral pattern is based
on subjects’ ambivalence before a total object. Guilt (love and hate
toward the same object in the same time and space) arises from this
 NEW PROBLEMS FACING PSYCHIATRY 15

ambivalence. Depressive anxiety derives from fear of the real or fanta-

sized loss of the object. The conflict of ambivalence, resulting from a
quadruple link (loving and feeling loved and also hating and feeling
hated by the object), paralyzes subjects due to its intricate network of
relations. Inhibition centers on specific ego functions. Sadness, moral
pain, loneliness, and helplessness stem from object loss, abandon-
ment, and guilt.
Suffering opens up the possibility of regression to a previous posi-
tion—an operational, instrumental regression aimed at controlling the
anxiety of the depressive position. The basic mechanism is the split-
ting of the ego and its links and the appearance of fear of an attack on
the ego, either from Area Two (hypochondria) or from Area Three
(paranoia). Depressive fear also arises in relation to the good object,
with feelings of being at its mercy and nostalgia.
Neuroses are defensive techniques against basic anxieties. They
are the most successful and the closest to normalcy, and are removed
from basic prototypical depression. Psychoses are also modes of hand-
ling basic anxieties, as is psychopathy. Perversions, in turn, are com-
plex ways of working through psychotic anxiety whose mechanism
focuses on appeasing the pursuer. Crime is an attempt to eliminate
the source of anxiety projected from Area One onto the external
world. If this process is internalized, it constitutes the suicidal situa-
tion. “Madness” is the expression of our inability to endure and work
through a certain quantity of suffering. The amount of pain we expe-
rience and the ability to bear it are specific to each human being
and constitute his dispositional points—his unique working-through
style.

Iatrogenic depression
We designate as iatrogenic depression the positive aspect of the psy-
chotherapeutic operation. This operation involves making the subject
whole through an operational dosage of dispersed parts, and making
the universal feature of protecting the good and controlling the bad
work at successive levels characterized by tolerable suffering. Suffer-
ing can be endured thanks to a diminished fear of losing the good and
a simultaneous decrease in the fear of attack during the confrontation
produced by the corrective experience.
16 THE LINKED SELF IN PSYCHOANALYSIS

In the successive assignation of roles that takes place during the

psychotherapeutic operation, psychotherapists must show enough
plasticity to assume the role assigned (transference) without acting on
it (therapists’ acting in). Rather, they should retranslate it (interpreta-
tion) in terms of a conceptualization, hypothesis, or fantasy concern-
ing patients’ unconscious processes while remaining alert to patients’
response (the emergent). Then analysts must take up this response
again in a continuum that resembles a spiraling of Ariadne’s thread.
We can now finally formulate what must be considered a work
unit, the only method that, by virtue of its predictive potential, is
closer to the scientific method according to traditional criteria. These
criteria, in turn, need to be analyzed to avoid stereotypes that, acting
from within the conceptual, referential, and operational framework
(or schema) (CROS, or ECRO in Spanish), operate almost uncon-
sciously as resistance to change on the part of the therapist. The work
unit comprises three elements representing the fine-tuning of the
operation, namely, existent–interpretation–emergent.
The emergent appears in the context of the operation and is
considered material by therapists. When the latter scotomize the
content [erase it from consciousness by way of an unconscious mech-
anism because they perceive this content as negative—Translator’s
Note)], patients will act it out outside the office. Therapists ought to
judge this acting out in terms of functional rather than formal ethics.
They should relate it to the here-and-now, which includes positive
aspects tied to learning about reality or restoring communication. If
therapists judge the acting out as good, bad, immoral, and so on, they
jeopardize their ability to understand their patients.
Thanks to learning and communication phenomena and succes-
sive clarifications, basic fears decrease during the corrective process
and ego integration is facilitated. Consequently, patients enter depres-
sion, and a project or long-term plan emerges that includes the idea of
finitude as a concrete possibility pertaining to them. Mechanisms of
creation and transcendence appear. The depressive position, then,
offers subjects an opportunity to acquire an identity—the basis of
insight—and helps them learn to read reality by means of a commu-
nication system, which is the basis of information.
Briefly, among the accomplishments of the arduous passage
through the depressive position (an inescapable phase of the corrective
process) are integration (which coincides with the decrease in the basic
 NEW PROBLEMS FACING PSYCHIATRY 17

fears that were reactivated by the triggering process), reduction of

guilt and inhibition, insight, and the setting in motion of mechanisms
such as reparation, creation, symbolization, and sublimation, which
result in the construction of abstract thought. Since it does not bring
along with it the underlying object, abstract thought is more useful and
flexible, and allows patients to make assessments in terms of strategy,
tactics, technique, and logistics in relation to themselves and others.
Planning and forecasting, along with the above-mentioned tech-
niques, constitute what Freud refers to as the process of working-
through that follows insight. Once this process starts, it persists des-
pite the break of the link with the therapist; when the corrective
process adopts the right strategy, working-through continues beyond
the analysis. Paradoxically, it is at this time that patients make the
greatest gains in self-guidance.
With iatrogenic depression, we complete the schema of five
depressions: proto-depression, developmental, triggering, regressive,
and iatrogenic depressions. These constitute the basic core of the pro-
cess of illness and cure. After discussing the principle of structural and
functional genetic continuity through the five types of depression, I
would like to go back to the principles ruling the formation of a patho-
logical structure. I shall refer now to the fourth principle, that is, struc-
tural mobility and interaction.
We have already pointed out the functional and meaningful nature
of the mental structures that acquire the features of so-called mental
illness. A sequence and stratification analysis shows the complex and
mixed quality of each. We may differentiate them according to the pre-
dominant location of basic fears in each area, depending on subjects’
significant links. From the point of view of their genesis, they may be
observed during development as well as in the process of falling ill and
in the corrective process. These structures are instrumental and situa-
tional for each here-and-now of the interaction process.
Byzantine discussions among psychiatrists are due primarily to
misunderstanding; a structure observed at a given moment may vary
in time and space. The link with the researcher determines the struc-
tural configuration, a configuration that is functional, instrumental,
situational, and link-dependent. This configuration is tied to a specific
mode of coding and decoding, learning, and so on. That is why we
maintain that this principle exists and bears phenomenological,
genetic, structural, and clinical aspects.
18 THE LINKED SELF IN PSYCHOANALYSIS

The fifth principle refers to the link, role, and spokesperson. We

have already defined the concept of link as a complex structure of
interaction, not linear but spiraling, that constitutes the foundation of
operational dialogue. Each turn of the spiral implies ego feedback and
a better understanding of the world. When this structure stagnates
due to the intensity of basic fears, communication and learning are
halted. We are now in the presence of a static rather than dynamic
structure, blocking patients’ active adaptation to reality.
The concept of role was developed and introduced into social
psychology by G. H. Mead, the pioneer of this discipline. Mead based
his theoretical development on the notion of roles and their inter-
action, and on the concepts of self and generalized other. The latter
represents the internal group as the product of subjects’ internaliza-
tion of others. Nonetheless, this theory has a limitation that we have
overcome by incorporating so-called ecological internalization into
the idea of subjects’ internal group or internal world.
We consider that the other is not internalized as an abstract or
isolated “other.” Internalization includes inanimate objects, that is, the
entire surrounding habitat, which greatly contributes to the construc-
tion of the body image. I define this image as the four-dimensional
representation of oneself developed by each person in the shape of
a Gestalt–Gestaltung whose pathology encompasses the temporal–
spatial structure of the personality. The popular notion of native land
or hometown goes far beyond the people residing there. Its actual
meaning may be grasped through people’s reactions to migration.
Fear of loss prevents migrant rural workers from assuming urban
roles, thus causing their marginalization.
Returning again to the concept of role, we shall consider the situ-
ations that develop more frequently in operative groups. The field of
the operative group is populated with prescribed or set roles defined
in terms of belonging, affiliation, cooperation, pertinence,
communication, learning, and telé (empathy). Represented in the
shape of an inverted cone, they converge as roles or functions to cause
a break with stereotypes when the group is performing a task.
As a group evolves, specific people will take on these roles accord-
ing to their personal characteristics. Not every role, however, is
assigned and assumed in connection to a positive task. Some roles
may be considered prescribed due to their frequency. Examples are
the roles of spokesperson, saboteur, and scapegoat, and that of leader
 NEW PROBLEMS FACING PSYCHIATRY 19

when one role is in command. Leaders can be autocratic, democratic,

or demagogic. It is remarkable that researchers have overlooked this
last type. Group members may take on these roles, and, whenever the
latter are adequately assigned and assumed in the context of subjects’
position within the group, their functionality increases.
Certain roles, such as the conspirator or saboteur, are generally
chosen by the exo-group and introduced into the intra-group with a
secret mission—to sabotage both the group’s task and the elucidation
process. These leaks, in the form of conspiracies, should be considered
a natural fact; we are dealing with outside forces that are incorporated
into the group to undermine change. In other words, they represent
resistance to change. They are delegated roles, sometimes very far
removed, but they appear in another group that, as a pressure group,
assumes the role of preventing change and advocating extreme
conservatism in the community.
The level of cooperation in small groups may be operational, but
it is even more so in larger groups. When leaderships take over a
larger field, so-called Caesarean identification coexists with coopera-
tive identification. Caesarean identification may play a role in history
when group situations are endangered or the group is unable to
understand the historical process, and also when fear is reactivated by
insecurity and danger becomes persecutory. The regressive move-
ment, headed by a Caesarean leader, tries to control or take over the
group.
This type of identification among members of a group or commu-
nity—masses and leader—drives them to think that the misfortune
that has befallen them was brought about by the conspiracy of certain
persons or groups, who are made responsible for it and assigned the
role of scapegoats. Nonetheless, we often discover a connecting thread
running from the leader to a “snitch.” Both perform some type of role-
playing in which one is the good guy, and the other the villain.

The triangular situation

The Oedipus complex as described by Freud, with its negative and
positive variants, can be explained in a much more meaningful way if
we resort to a spatial representation in the shape of a triangle. In this
representation, the son is in the upper angle, the mother in the lower
20 THE LINKED SELF IN PSYCHOANALYSIS

left, and the father in the lower right angle. Following the direction of
each side of the triangle, we obtain a representation of four links. For
example, on a first level, the child loves and feels loved by its mother,
while on an underlying level it hates and feels hated by her. On the
opposite side is the child’s relationship with its father, where on a first
level it hates and feels hated and on a second level it loves and feels
loved.
What is seldom remembered is a component that operates since
prenatal life. I am referring here to the link structure between mother
and father, in which each loves and feels loved by, or hates and feels
hated by, the other. Irrespective of the participants, this link would
also have four ways. In truth, however, if we look at it from both ends,
it becomes more complicated, since both members of the couple
assign and assume roles. The quantity of assignments and assump-
tions depends on the roles of being loved and being hated. This real
jungle of links forms a totalizing totality or Gestalt where the modifi-
cation of one parameter causes change in the whole.
Eighty percent of the literature on children and their links refers to
their relationship with the mother; the father appears as a hidden
figure, but operative and dangerous for that very reason. It is the
notion of the third party that finally leads us to define this bipolar
relationship as bicorporal but tripersonal. In communication theory,
the third party is represented by noise, which interferes with a mes-
sage between emitter and receiver. When applied to situations of
social conflict, we find it once again as a basic, universal structure.
Through successive displacements, people leave each angle to
perform similar roles elsewhere depending on their age and sex. We
thus progressively separate from the endogamic group and move
toward the exogamic group represented by society. In the endogamic
group, the incest taboo sets the direction of kinship lines with its
prohibitions. In this process, we go from individual psychology,
which addresses the endopsychic situation, to social psychology,
which deals with interrelations in the endogroup (or intragroup), and
finally to sociology, which focuses on intergroup relations. This is the
exo-group, the specific realm of sociology.
If we consider subjects’ functions based on these parameters, we
may discuss different types of behavior (economic, political, and reli-
gious behavior, among others) at a group or community level. We may
analyze and evaluate this level in terms of the six functions described
 NEW PROBLEMS FACING PSYCHIATRY 21

above: belonging and affiliation, cooperation, pertinence, learning,

communication, and telé (empathy). These functions interact at the
intrapsychic, endogroup, and exogroup levels, and seek to produce
change that may be described at the individual, psychosocial, or
community level as well as in terms of the direction of behavior.
References
Abraham, K. (1953). A short study of the development of the libido in the light of mental disorders.
In: D. Bryan & A. Strachey (Trans.), Selected Papers of Karl Abraham (pp. 418501). New York:
Basic Books.
Ainsworth, M. , Blehar, M. , Waters, E. , & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of Attachment: A
Psychological Study of the Strange Situation. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Alexander, F. , & French, T. M. (1946). Psychoanalytic Therapy: Principles and Application. New
York: Ronald Press.
Allen, F. (1942). Psychotherapy with Children. New York: W. W. Norton.
Aron, L. (1996). A Meeting of Minds: Mutuality in Psychoanalysis. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press.
Aviram, R. (2009). The Relational Origins of Prejudice. Lanham, MD: Jason Aronson.
Baranger, M. , & Baranger, W. (2009). The Work of Confluence: Listening and Interpreting in the
Psychoanalytic Field, L. G. Fiorini (Ed.). London: Karnac.
Beebe, B. , & Lachmann, F. (2002). Infant Research and Adult Treatment: Co-Constructing
Interactions. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press.
Bion, W. R. (1961). Experiences in Groups and Other Papers. London: Tavistock [reprinted Hove:
Brunner-Routledge, 2001].
258 Bion, W. R. (1967). Attacks on linking. In: Second Thoughts (pp. 93109). London:
Heinemann.
Bion, W. R. (1970). Attention and Interpretation. London: Heinemann.
Bion, W. R. (1990). A Memoir of the Future (revised and corrected edition). London: Karnac.
Bloy, L. (1887). Le dsesper [The Desperate One]. Paris: A. Soirat.
Bloy, L. (1905). Le cabanon de Promethe [The cabin of Prometheus]. In: Belluaires et porchers
[Gladiators and Swineherds]. Paris: ditions Sulliver.
Bonaparte, M. (1946). Identificacin de una hija con su madre muerta [A daughters identification
with her dead mother]. Revista de Psicoanlisis, 4(2): 272292.
Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and Loss, Volume 1: Attachment. London: Hogarth.
Brmond, H. (1926). Prayer and Poetry: A Contribution to Poetical Theory, A. L. Thorold (Trans.).
London: Burnes, Oates & Wasburn, 1927.
Brton, A. (1940). Anthology of Black Humor, M. Polizzotti (Trans.). San Francisco, CA: City Lights
Books, 1997.
Brill, A. A. (1921). Fundamental Conceptions of Psychoanalysis. New York: Harcourt Brace.
Brincourt, A. (1946). Satan et la posie [Satan and Poetry]. Paris: Grasset.
Britton, R. (2004). Subjectivity, objectivity, and triangular space. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 73:
4761.
Crcamo, C. E. (1943). La serpiente emplumada. Psicoanlisis de la religin maya- azteca y del
sacrificio humano. Revista de Psicoanlisis, 1(1): 538.
Carroll, L. (1864). Alices Adventures in Wonderland. London: Macmillan.
Carroll, L. (1872). Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. London: Macmillan.
Clarke, G. , & Scharff, D. (2014). Fairbairn and the Object Relations Tradition. London: Karnac.
Count de Lautramont (2011). Les Chants de Maldoror, R. J. Dent (Trans.). London: Solar Books.
Cucurullo, A. , Faimberg, H. , & Wender, L. (1982). La psychanalyse en Argentine
[Psychoanalysis in Argentina]. In: R. Jaccard (Ed.), Histoire de la psychanalyse [The History of
Psychoanalysis]. Paris: Hachette.
Daro, R. (1993)[1896]. El Conde de Lautramont [The Count of Lautramont]. In: Retratos y figuras
[Portraits and Figures] (pp. 4854). Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho.
De Gourmont, R. (1921). Book of Masks, J. Lewis (Trans.). Boston, MA: John W. Luce.
259 De la Serna, R. G. (1925). Preface to the Count of Lautramont. Los cantos de Maldororm, J.
Gmez de la Serna (Trans.). Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva.
De Mijolla, A. (Ed.) (2002). Dictionnaire International de la Psychanalyse [International Dictionary
of Psychoanalysis]. Paris: Calmann-Lvy.
Dicks, H. V. (1967). Marital Tensions. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Eiguer, A. (2007). The intersubjective links in perversion. International Journal of Psychoanalysis,
88: 11351152.
Eiguer, A. (2013). Le tiers. Psychanalyse de lintersubjectivit [The Third: Psychoanalysis of
Intersubjectivity]. Paris: Dunod.
Ezriel, H. (1950). A psychoanalytic approach to group treatment. British Journal of Medical
Psychology, 23: 5974.
Ezriel, H. (1952). Notes on psychoanalytic group therapy II: interpretation and research.
Psychiatry, 15: 119126.
Faimberg, H. (2005). The Telescoping of Generations. London: Routledge.
Fairbairn, W. R. D. (1952a). Endopsychic structure considered in terms of object relationships. In:
Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality (pp. 5981). London: Routledge.
Fairbairn, W. R. D. (1952b). Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality. London: Routledge.
Ferro, A. (2009). Mind Works: Techniques and Creativity in Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge.
Fonagy, P. , Gergely, B. , Jurist, F. , & Target, M. (2003). Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the
Development of the Self. New York: Other Press.
Foulkes, S. (1964). Therapeutic Group Analysis. London: Allen and Unwin.
Freud, A. (1927). Psychoanalysis of Children. New York: International Universities Press.
Freud, S. (1905d). Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. S. E., 7 : 123246. London: Hogarth.
Freud, S. (19121913). Totem and Taboo. S. E., 13 . London: Hogarth.
Freud, S. (19161917). Lecture XXII. Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. S. E., 16 : 339357.
London: Hogarth.
Freud, S. (1917e). Mourning and melancholia. s. e., 14 : 237258. London: Hogarth.
Freud, S. (1919h). The uncanny. s. e., 17 : 217256. London: Hogarth.
Freud, S. (1921c). Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. S. E., 18 : 67146. London:
Hogarth.
Freud, S. (1923b). The Ego and the Id. S. E., 19 : 166. London: Hogarth.
Freud, S. (1923d). A seventeenth-century demonological neurosis. s. e., 19 : 69107. London:
Hogarth.
260 Freud, S. (1926d). Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety. S. E., 20 : 77178. London: Hogarth.
FrommReichmann, F. (1939). Transference problems in schizophrenics. Psychoanalytic
Quarterly, 8: 412426.
Gleick, J. (1987). Chaos. New York: Viking.
Goldmann, L. (1964). Gense et structure [Genesis and Structure]. Le Hague: Mouton.
Grotstein, J. (2000). Who Is the Dreamer Who Dreams the Dream? Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic
Press.
GuillotMuoz, G. , & GuillotMuoz, A. (1925). Lautramont y Laforgue [Lautramont and Laforgue].
Montevideo: Coleccin France-Amrique.
Heimann, P. (1950). On counter-transference. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 31: 8184.
Heine, H. (1887). Gods in exile. In: H. Ellis (Ed.), The Prose Writings of Heinrich Heine. London:
Walter Scott.
Hopper, E. (2003a). The Social Unconscious: Selected Papers . London: Jessica Kingsley.
Hopper, E. (2003b). Traumatic Experience in the Unconscious Life of Groups. London: Jessica
Kingsley.
Hopper, E. , & Weinberg, H. (Eds.) (2011). The Social Unconscious in Persons, Groups and
Societies: Volume 1: Mainly Theory . London: Karnac.
Hopper, E. , & Weinberg, H. (Eds.) (2016). The Social Unconscious in Persons, Groups and
Societies: Volume 2: Mainly Foundation Matrices . London: Karnac.
Hopper, E. , & Weinberg, H. (Eds.) (2017). The Social Unconscious in Persons, Groups and
Societies: Volume 3 : London: Karnac.
Isaacs, S. (2002). The nature and function of phantasy. In: M. Klein , P. Heimann , & S. Isaacs
(Eds.), Developments in Psychoanalysis (pp. 67121). London: Karnac.
Jaitin, R. (1995). La reprsentation du temps et de lespace pistmique (chez les tudiants argentins
et franais) [Representation of time and epistemic space (among Argentine and French Students)]
(PhD Dissertation). Institut de Psychologie et Psychopathologie Clinique, Universit Lumire Lyon 2,
France.
Jasiner, G. , & Woronowski, M. (1992). Para pensar a Pichon [Pondering Pichon]. Buenos Aires:
Lugar Editorial.
Joseph, B. (1985). Transference: the total situation. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 66:
447454.
Kas, R. (1994). Preface to Psychanalyse et psychologie sociale: Hommage Enrique Pichon
Rivire [Psychoanalysis and Social Psychology: A Tribute to Enrique Pichon Rivire] Revue de
psychothrapie psychanalytique de groupe, 23, Paris.
261 Kas, R. (2006). Linking, Alliances, and Shared Space: Groups and the Psychoanalyst,
Andrew Weller (Trans.). London: Karnac.
Klein, M. (1930). The psychotherapy of the psychoses. In: The Writings of Melanie Klein, Vol. 1:
Love, Guilt and Reparation and Other Works 1921 1945 (pp. 233235). London: Hogarth Press,
1975 [reprinted London: Karnac, 1992].
Klein, M. (1935). A contribution to the psychogenesis of manicdepressive states. International
Journal of Psychoanalysis, 16: 145174.
Klein, M. (1975a). Love, Guilt and Reparation and Other Works 19211945. London: Hogarth
Press.
Klein, M. (1975b). Envy and Gratitude and other Works 19461963. London: Hogarth Press.
Klein, M. , Heimann, P. , Isaacs, S. , & Riviere, J. (1952). Developments in Psycho-Analysis.
London: Hogarth.
Kretsch, D. , & Crutchfield, R. S. (1948). Theory and Problems of Social Psychology. New York:
McGraw-Hill.
Lagache, D. (1953). Some aspects of the transference. International Journal of Psychoanalysis,
34: 110.
Lewin, K. (1948). Resolving Social Conflicts: Selected Papers on Group Dynamics. New York:
Harper & Row.
Lewin, K. (1951). Field Theory in the Social Sciences, G. W. Lewin (Ed.). New York: Harper &
Row.
Lewin, K. (1960). A Dynamic Theory of Personality. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Losso, R. (2001). Psicoanlisis de la Familia, RecorridosTerico-tcnicos [Family Psychoanalysis:
Theoretical and Technical Paths]. Buenos Aires, Lumen.
Losso, R. (2012). La violence des mythes. Mythes familiaux et mythes sociaux [The violence of
myths: family and social myths]. In: A. Eiguer & A. M. Nicol (Eds.), La violence dans les familles et
les couples [Violence in Families and Couples] (pp. 4756). Paris.
Losso, R. , & Losso, A. P. (2006). Intrapsychic, interpsychic and transpsychic communication. In:
J. Scharff & D. Scharff (Eds.), New Paradigms for Treating Relationships (pp. 3342). Lanham,
MD: Jason Aronson.
Losso, R. , & Losso, A. P. (2011). Viejos y nuevos mitos en la familia. Mitos familiares y mitos
sociales [New and old family myths: family and social myths]. Revista de Psicoanlisis, 68(1):
139150.
Mabille, P. (1998). The Mirror of the Marvelous: The Classic Surrealist Work on Myth, J. Gladding
(Trans.). Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions International.
262 Main, M. (1995). Attachment: overview with implications for clinical work. In: S. Goldberg , R.
Muir , & J. Kerr (Eds.), Attachment Theory: Social, Developmental and Clinical Perspectives (pp.
407475). Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press.
Main, M. , & Solomon, J. (1990). Procedures for identifying infants as disorganized/disoriented
during the Ainsworth Strange Situation. In: M. Greenberg , D. Chichetti , & M. Cummings (Eds.),
Attachment in Pre school Years (pp. 95124). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Mead, H. (1934). Mind, Self, and Society, C. W. Morris (Ed.). Chicago IL: University of Chicago
Press.
Minkowska, F. (Brokman) (1925). Les troubles essentiels de la schizophrenie dans leurs rapports
avec les donnes de la psychologie et de la biologie modernes [Essential Problems of
Schizophrenia and their Connections with the Data of Modern Psychology and Biology]. Paris:
Payot.
Moliner, M. (1987). Diccionario del uso del espaol. Madrid: Gredos.
Moreno, J. (2014). How We Became Human, Judith Filc (Trans.). Lanham, MD: Rowman &
Littlefield.
Obholzer, A. , & Roberts, V. Z. (1994). The Unconscious at Work. London: Routledge.
Ogden, T. (1994). The analytic third: working in inter-subjective clinical facts. International Journal
of Psychoanalysis, 75: 3119.
Ogden, T. (2001). Conversations at the Frontier of Dreaming. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson.
Ogden, T. (2003). Subjects of Analysis. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson.
Ogden, T. (2005). This Art of Psychoanalysis: Dreaming Undreamt Dreams and Interrupted Cries.
Harmondsworth: Routledge.
Pichon Rivire, E. (1941). Algunos conceptos fundamentales de la teora psicoanaltica de la
epilepsia [Some key concepts of psychoanalytic epilepsy theory]. Index de Neurologa y
psiquiatra, 3(3): 8599.
Pichon Rivire, E. (1944). Los dinamismos de la epilepsia [The dynamisms of epilepsy]. Revista de
Psicoanlisis, 13, 117165.
Pichon Rivire, E. (1946a). Contribucin a la teora psicoanaltica de la esquizofrenia [Contribution to
the psychoanalytic theory of schizophrenia]. Revista de Psicoanlisis, 4(1): 122.
Pichon Rivire, E. (1946b). Notas para una biografia de Isidoro Ducasse, conde de Lautramont
[Notes for a biography of Isidore Ducasse, Count of Lautramont]. La Nacin, 14 April.
Pichon Rivire, E. (1961). Algunas observaciones sobre la transferencia en los pacientes psicticos
[Some observations on the transference in psychotic patients]. Revista de Psicoanlisis, 2.
Reprinted in: Del Psicoanlisis a la Psicologa Social (Volumen II) (pp. 267298). Buenos Aires:
Ediciones Galerna, 1971.
263 Pichon Rivire, E. (1971a). Del psicoanlisis a la psicologa social (Vols I & II) . [From
Psychoanalysis to Social Psychology, Volumes I & II]. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Galerna.
Pichon Rivire, E. (1971b). Estructura de una escuela destinada a la formaci de psicogos sociales
[structure of a school devoted to the training of social psychologists]. In: Del psicoanlisis a la
psicologa social (Vols I & II) . [From Psychoanalysis to Social Psychology, Volumes I & II] (pp.
149160). Buenos Aires: Ediciones Galerna.
Pichon Rivire, E. (1971c). Tratamiento de grupos familiares. Psicoterapia colectiva [The treatment
of family groups: collective psychotherapy]. In: Del psicoanlisis a la psicologa social (Vols I & II)
[From Psychoanalysis to Social Psychology, Volumes I & II] (pp. 189199). Buenos Aires:
Ediciones Galerna.
Pichon Rivire, E. (1971d). Grupos operativos y enfermedad nica [Operative groups and single
illness]. In: Del psicoanlisis a la psicologa social [From Psychoanalysis to Social Psychology]
(Volume II) (pp. 267298). Buenos Aires: Ediciones Galerna.
Pichon Rivire, E. (1971e). New problems facing psychiatry. In: Del psicoanlisis a la psicologa
social (Volume I) (pp. 433455). Buenos Aires: Ediciones Galerna.
Pichon Rivire, E. (1971f). Family groups: an operative approach. In: Del Psicoanlisis a la
Psicologa Social (Volume II) (pp. 202213). Buenos Aires: Ediciones Galerna.
Pichon Rivire, E. (1971g). Grupo operativo y modelo dramtico [Operative group and dramatic
model]. Del psicoanlisis a la psicologa social (Volume II) (pp. 299307). Buenos Aires: Ediciones
Galerna.
Pichon Rivire, E. (1971h) (in collaboration with A. P. de Quiroga). Contributions to the didactics of
social psychology. In: Del psicoanlisis a la psicologa social (Vols I & II) . [From Psychoanalysis to
Social Psychology, Volumes I & II] (pp. 3746). Buenos Aires: Ediciones Galerna.
Pichon Rivire, E. (1975). Entrevista con Jacques Lacan [Interview with Jacques Lacan].
Actualidad Psicolgica, 1(12): 19.
Pichon Rivire, E. (1977). Prologue to A. Fontana. El tiempo y los grupos [Time and Groups].
Buenos Aires: Vancu.
Pichon Rivire, E. (1978a). Acerca del vnculo [On links]. Revista Uruguaya de Psicoanlisis, 58:
1322.
Pichon Rivire, E. (1978b). El concepto de portavoz. (The concept of the spokesman.) Temas de
Psicologa Social, 2: 1120.
264 Pichon Rivire, E. (1979). Teora del vnculo [Link Theory]. Buenos Aires: Nueva Visin.
Pichon Rivire, E. (1980). Una teora de abordaje de la prevencin en el grupo familiar [A theory of
prevention in the family group]. Revista Argentina de Medicina Psicosomtica , 17.
Pichon Rivire, E. , & Pampliega de Quiroga, A. (1970). Psicologa de la vida cotidiana [Psychology
of Everyday Life]. Buenos Aires, Galerna.
Pichon Rivire, J. , Pichon Rivire, E. , & Pichon Rivire, A. (2009). Enrique & Arminda. Buenos
Aires: Capital Intelectual.
Pierre-Quint, L. (1929). Le Comte de Lautramont et Dieu [The Count of Lautramont and God].
Marseille: Les Cahiers du Sud.
Puget, J. , & Berenstein, I. (1989). Psicoanlisis de la pareja matrimonial [Psychoanalysis of the
Matrimonial Couple]. Buenos Aires: Paidos.
Quiroga, A. P. de (1980). The training of group coordinators at the Dr. Enrique Pichon Rivire
School of Social Psychology of Buenos Aires. Presented to the International Congress of Group
Psychotherapy, Copenhagen, August.
Quiroga, A. P. de (1986). La concepcin del sujeto en el pensamiento de Enrique Pichon Rivire.
Fundamentos de una psicologia definida como social [The concept of the subject in Enrique
Pichon Rivires thought: bases of a psychology defined as social]. In: Enfoques y Perspectivas en
Psicologa Social [Approaches and Perspectives in Social Psychology] (pp. 930). Buenos Aires:
Ed. Cinco.
Racamier, P. C. (1995). Lincest et lincestuel [Incest and the Incestual]. Paris: Editions du College.
Rank, O. (1971)[1914]. The Double: A Psychoanalytic Study, H. Tucker Jr (Trans.). Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press.
Raymond, M. (1950). From Baudelaire to Surrealism. New York: Wittenborn, Schultz.
Reik, T. (1931). Ritual: Psychoanalytic Studies, D. Bryan (Trans.). London: Hogarth Press.
Resnik, S. (2001). In: R. Doria Medina Egua (Ed.), Grandes psicoanalistas argentinos. Buenos
Aires: Lumen Editorial.
Rice, A. K. (1965). Learning for Leadership. London: Tavistock.
Rickman, J. (2003). Selected Contributions to Psycho-Analysis. London: Karnac.
Rizolatti, G. , & Craighero, L. (2004). The mirror-neuron system. Annual Review of Neuroscience,
27: 169192.
Rosenfeld, H. (1949). Remarks on the relation of male homosexuality to paranoia, paranoid
anxiety and narcissism. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 30: 3647.
265 Sartre, J.-P. (1948). The room. In: L. Alexander (Trans.), The Wall. New York: New
Directions.
Sartre, J.-P. (1991[1960]). Critique of Dialectical Reason, A. Sheridan Smith (Trans.). London:
Verso, 1991.
Scharff, D. E. , & Scharff, J. S. (1998). Object Relations Individual Therapy. Northvale, NJ: Jason
Aronson.
Scharff, D. E. , & Scharff, J. S. (2011). The Interpersonal Unconscious. Lanham MD: Jason
Aronson.
Scharff, J. S. , & Scharff, D. E. (2000). Tuning the Therapeutic Instrument. Northvale, NJ: Jason
Aronson.
Schilder, P. (1936). The analysis of ideologies as a psychotherapeutic method, especially in group
treatment. American Journal of Psychiatry, 93: 601617.
Schonberger, S. (1946). A clinical contribution to the analysis of the nightmare-syndrome.
Psychoanalytic Review, 33: 4470.
Schore, A. (2003). Affect Regulation and the Repair of the Self. New York: Norton.
Stolorow, R. , & Atwood, G. (1992). Contexts of Being: The Intersubjective Foundations of
Psychological Life. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press.
Stolorow, R. , & Atwood, G. (1996). The intersubjective perspective. Psychoanalytic Review,
83(2): 181194.
Sullivan, H. S. (1954). The Psychiatric Interview. New York: Norton.
Sutherland, J. (1963). Object relations theory and the conceptual model of psychoanalysis. British
Journal of Medical Psychology, 36: 109124.
Tubert-Oklander, J. (2014). The One and the Many: Relational Psychoanalysis and Group
Analysis . London: Karnac.
Turilazzi Manfredi, S. , & Ponsi, M. (1998). Transfert, controtransfert e intersoggettivit.
Contrapposizione o convergenza? [Transference, countertransference, and intersubjectivity:
opposition or convergence?] Presented to the Seminar Intersoggettivit, reciprocit e contenimento
nello sviluppo infantile e nel lavoro clinico [Intersubjectivity, Reciprocity, and Containment in Child
Development and in Clinical Work], Naples, November.
Winnicott, D. W. (1965a). The theory of the motherinfant relationship. In: Maturational Processes
and the Facilitating Environment (pp. 3755). London: Hogarth.
Winnicott, D. W. (1965b). Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment. London:
Hogarth.
Winnicott, D. W. (1965c). Collected Papers: Through Paediatrics to Psychoanalysis . London:
Hogarth.
266 Winnicott, D. W. (1965d). Transitional object and transitional phenomena. In: Collected
Papers: Through Paediatrics to Psychoanalysis (pp. 229242). London: Hogarth.
Winnicott, D. W. (1971). Playing and Reality. London: Tavistock.
Zeitner, R. M. (2012). Self within Marriage. New York: Routledge.
Zito Lema, V. (1986). Conversaciones con Enrique Pichon Rivire sobre el arte y la locura
[Conversations with Enrique Pichon Rivire on Art and Madness]. Buenos Aires: Editorial Cinco.